


A Walk Through Hell

by FireSoul



Series: Hell or High-Water [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, No actual Rape/Non-con, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, arrow season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-03-29 19:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13933776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: What if Leonard Snart, through no complete fault of his own of course, had been on board the Amazo in 2007, when Sara Lance was pulled from the water? What if the crook met the assassin before she became the assassin? What would happen if these two met in a place where trust is a luxury no one can afford?





	1. The Amazo

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a one shot, then I was asked to write a sequel, now I am partway through that sequel, and I have realized that it is going be multiple chapters so here we go!

How it is that Leonard Snart found himself stuck on a freighter that goes by the ridiculous name “The Amazo” is a long story, one that he would rather not tell. But he will say that it was mostly Mick’s fault, and if he ever makes it back to Central City his friend better have a good hiding place.

The Amazo is supposed to be a prison ship, and to an extent it is, but the Captain and the guards are all on the payroll of resident scientist Anthony Ivo and if they like you enough they’ll let you onto their side.

Len has long made sure that they like him enough.

He doesn’t particularly care for torture, doesn’t have any desire to inflict it just for sadistic pleasure, but he knows better than to try and dissuade the others. He’s a good navigator, and while he doesn’t like practicing torture himself he is willing to play the good cop whenever Ivo or The Captain is seeking information from a “forgetful” prisoner. Sometimes they talk to him, he has a way with people, but if they still keep their mouths shut then hey, it’s not like they weren’t given a chance.

Now, being in the middle of The North China Sea, Len hadn’t considered that their numbers might increase any time soon. Decrease yes, it isn’t unusual for people to turn up dead around here, but picking up a new prisoner in the middle of the ocean seemed highly unlikely.

But, he supposes, not impossible.

They found her floating on a piece of metal, a pale blonde little thing wearing nothing but her underwear and some tattered and tiny sorry excuse for a robe. She was shaking and crying like a frightened animal from the moment Butcher and his friend pulled her up onto the deck. Len barely got a look at her before they started dragging her off to the lower deck where they keep the prisoners, but he saw enough to know that she’s barely grown and wearing next to nothing. That’s a bad situation in a good scenario, but to make things worse she’s just been dragged onto a ship filled with some of the worst men on the face of the earth. He can hear her cries even now as they’re dragging her away and his gut twists sickeningly.

There is no way she’s going to survive.

 

* * *

 

“Snart?” Ivo asks curiously when he shows up in the man’s cabin, turning in his desk chair away from some chart or other. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Butcher found a girl in the water today.” Normally he doesn’t like to be so blunt, he’s found in his experience that it’s better to string people along and toy with their minds when trying to get something, but he’s kind of on a clock here.

Ivo nods, not looking the least bit concerned. “I’m aware.”

“I need you to grant her protection.” His voice is cool, casual, and disinterested, the way that it always is as he takes one sauntering step into the room. Ivo is laughing at the request but he doesn’t let that deter him, even if outright demanding something when he has no bargaining chip isn’t a usual Snart tactic he still knows how to do it.

“And why would I do that?” Ivo questions, “Let the men have their fun, they need it after all this time on the ship.” Leonard feels the anger flood his veins at that, pissed beyond reason at what Ivo is insinuating, but he doesn’t allow it to show.

“Besides,” Ivo continues, “I saw them pull her up, she won’t last a week. She’s useless to us.”

“Right now, maybe.” Leonard half agrees, wandering around the room until he reaches the desk and leans just slightly onto it. “But consider this.” He meets Ivo’s gaze, an almost evil grin slowly creeping onto his face. “We have a problem with secrets around here, and each new victim takes longer and longer to break. Not to say it doesn’t work, no it certainly does, but it’s starting to get time consuming. Now as you know I have a sister, one who uses her pretty face to get what she wants, and if that doesn’t work, well… hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

 

* * *

 

The next time that he sees her it’s in Ivo’s cabin, not that the old storage room is really a cabin, but it’s still infinitely better than anyone else’s living arrangement around here. Whether the girl has chosen to stay in here or if Ivo has ordered her to he isn’t sure, but it’s probably for the best either way. From what he knows Ivo doesn’t have the stomach to do to her what the other men will. She jumps out of her skin the instant that he opens to door, a high squeak of fear coming from her mouth and he wonders if maybe she isn’t going to be able to adapt to her new position in this place. She won’t have the luxury of being able to turn a blind eye to the torture like he does; if she wants to stay alive she is going to have to inflict it.

“Relax,” he practically whispers even though she’s all the way on the other side of the room, curled up in a chair with that pathetic robe of hers wrapped around herself. “Ivo sent me with your dinner, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She’s eyeing him warily, and he doesn’t blame her, not after hearing from Ivo about what was happening on the prison floor when he took her from Butcher. She still looks very much like a frightened animal, and just like an animal she unwinds herself by only a hair at the sight of the bowl in his hands. He suspects that she already knows its contents are barely edible, but he also suspects that it has been days since she last ate anything.

He takes one step forward and she curls back into the chair once again, but one he stills and raises an eyebrow at her she slowly unfolds herself and allows him to approach. He doesn’t get too close to her, just enough that she can take the paper bowl from his outstretched hand. She looks skeptical for all of three seconds before raising the bowl to her lips and tipping it back greedily, and the promptly choking on the vile concoction.

“You get used to it,” he comments dryly, admittedly a little impressed that even in her near traumatized state she is still careful not to spill too much of her soup while choking.

Once she’s recovered she tries slurping her dinner down much more slowly, picking at the bits of questionable meat with her fingers since she lacks a spoon. She makes an array of faces at the substance, none of them good, but she eats without complaint.

Maybe she will stand a chance.

Whilst the girl finishes her dinner Leonard’s eyes fall onto a heap of clothes on the floor beside her seat. He doesn’t touch them, but he does wonder where they came from. They are clearly woman’s clothes, and suddenly the sick feeling returns to his stomach as he realizes they must have been pulled off one of Ivo’s previous failures.

She’s watching him now, but he doesn’t react. They fall into a long, almost companionable silence.

“This place is hell,” he finally tells her, though he still doesn’t look at her. “If you do what you’re told, whatever that is, you might get out alive.”

 

* * *

 

He sees her fairly often after that. Apparently since he’s the one who told Ivo to protect her that means he is also protecting her.

That, of course, puts a target on his back.

Her first lesson is fighting, he decides, because until she proves herself the crew and captives alike are going to have her in their sights. Her small stature, while the others will see it as a weakness, actually gives her an advantage. Len remembers Juvie, he remembers not hitting his growth spurt until he was nearly seventeen, and he remembers having to learn the hard way how to take down an opponent bigger than himself. He can teach Sara, that’s what she tells him her name is, how to do that.

“Alright,” he practically growls at her on only her second afternoon here. He’s dragged her up to the flat roof of The Amazo, it’s sturdy enough for sparring and he needs to show her right off the bat that this isn’t going to be easy. She’s looking around anxiously, but snaps to attention at his words. “At the moment you’re the only woman on this ship, which means that if you want to stay alive you have to do more than show these men you’re just as good as them, you need them to believe you’re better. They’ll respect Ivo’s protection over you for a few weeks, a month at most, but sooner or later they’ll go after you just to show that they can. You need to be ready.”

She looks very, very scared by this idea, and she should.

“Why do you care?” She asks, her words carried off by the wind and he almost doesn’t hear them.

“About you?” He asks incredulously, “I don’t.” Her face falls a little, but not much, not like she wasn’t expecting the answer she’s gotten. He takes a step closer to her, allowing his face to become just a hair softer. “No woman should ever suffer at the hands of men.”

She doesn’t quite look like she knows what to do with that, but it doesn’t matter. He turns away from her with a spin of his heel and then turns back.

“Now,” he drawls, all business and cold persona perfectly in place, “Let’s get started.”

 

* * *

 

When they aren’t training Sara mostly stays by Ivo’s side. This isn’t for lack of trying to talk to him, oh no she tries, but Len is persistent in keeping her at an arms length. His distaste for torture already made him a subject of gossip long before the blonde showed up, he doesn’t need her making things any worse by trailing after him like a lost puppy. She looks a little disappointed the first time that he brushes her off, and even more so the second, but upon the third she only shrugs and splits off into Ivo’s room. He’s admittedly impressed by how quick of a learner she is when it comes to combat, getting better every day and rarely making the same mistakes twice. He starts to notice her confidence growing as well; she comes to the deck at mealtime instead of Ivo bringing her ration to his room for her afterwards. She is still at Ivo’s side, but much less glued to his hip than Leonard would’ve expected.

It’s a start.

She’s been here for a few days shy of a month when he passes her in a hallway; it’s the first time he’s seen her alone.

“Snart,” she regards as she passes him, like nothing is out of the ordinary.

They keep training on the roof, as well as some less popular areas of the deck, and after awhile the day comes when midway through a session of sparring Leonard suddenly realizes that he is hardly holding anything back. He’s not trying to hurt her, he’s on the defensive, and just as he realizes this stars suddenly erupt in his vision and he lands with a hard thud on the metal of the back deck, blood trailing from his nose.

He takes a second to reorient himself, to try and process what just happened, as he sits up and finds that she’s standing over him with an arm outstretched.

“You good?” She practically snorts as he accepts the hand and she helps him up.

“Yeah,” he says, a little breathless, and the taste of blood dripping onto his lips as he speaks. He sniffles and wipes it away, shaking his head and immediately regretting it.

“Nice shot,” she beams at his words and he knows he should tell her not to, but for whatever reason he can’t bring himself to do such a thing. It’s rare that you find a smile as bright and happy as hers in a place like this.

 

* * *

 

The smile doesn’t last for long.

Another dock, another colleague of Ivo’s, and another plan gone south.

Surprise, surprise this informant isn’t being too forthcoming with information and is going to need persuading. They chain him up in an empty cage, allowing the other prisoner’s to watch the show. Len gives questioning a go but the guy isn’t cracking, so naturally Butcher steps up to the plate with his knife.

“Hold on,” Ivo’s demand is calm, but serious, and he steps forward studying their newest prisoner. “Let Sara do it.”

The entire room freezes.

Len can’t help but to look in the woman’s direction. She looks just as shell shocked as the others by Ivo’s declaration, but she shakes it off and steps forward without a word. Butcher is hesitant to hand over his knife, but with a little prompting from Ivo it makes the transfer into Sara’s grip. Now Leonard doesn’t normally keep his eyes glued to the torture, usually he finds a few interesting patches of rust on the walls to give his attention to. But today he watches, and he hears as the man screams out in pain while Sara carves into him. It’s her first time, so she has to be corrected a few times before she accidently stabs something major and loses their chance at intel. But by the time she’s done the prisoner is singing like a canary, and if anyone on this boat was still entertaining any funny ideas involving her, well they know better now.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know what it is that compels him to go and seek her out later that night, not quite guilt or sorrow but something close. He takes a bottle of whisky from his stash and heads off for Ivo’s room, knowing the man is still busy talking with the captain. He knocks once and she answers after only a few seconds, looking genuinely surprised to see him. A voice in his head is practically screaming that he shouldn’t be doing this, that he is not the type of man who helps people when there is nothing for him to gain from it, but he can’t bring himself to listen. Instead he just holds up the bottle and a deck of cards he always keeps in his jacket.

“Roof?” He asks with an eyebrow raised and she considers him for a moment more, and then she nods.

 

* * *

 

They get through a little more than half the bottle, just passing it back and forth over a game of war, before either of them speaks. But, eventually, somebody has to break the silence, and Sara decides she’s going to be the one to do it.

“A few months ago I was studying for finals,” she practically mutters, they’ve now moved to playing scat and she keeps considering her cards even as she speaks.

“Funny how fast things can change,” Leonard drawls with a sigh, he flicks his eyes up to see if she gives a reaction but aside from a slight nod she doesn’t.

They remain in silence for some time after that, the only words being spoken the occasional uttering of “scat” whenever one of them wins a game.

These card games start to become a more and more frequent. Sometimes at night, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes on the roof, and sometimes in a back corner of the ship. Leonard is finding that he doesn’t really mind spending time with Sara these days, that she isn’t making him any bigger of a target than he ever has been. She has very nearly reached the goal he set for her when they began and she’s starting to carve out a place for herself on the crew as more than Ivo’s pet. Still, Len hears the whispers. She’s only tortured the one man, she isn’t in the clear yet. It helps immensely that she went through with the whole thing until the man cracked, never once crying, passing out, vomiting, or anything else that might indicate to the other’s that she is anything less than them. But not being less, unfortunately, isn’t going to be enough, and he’s told her from day one that if she wants to survive here she is going to need to prove that she’s more.

Of course in order to prove something like that she needs a chance, meaning somebody needs to go after her, and tonight during dinner as she’s standing in line for her nightly ration Leonard sees it about to happen.

One of the ship’s many “guards”, Theodor, starts creeping up along side the haphazardly formed line until he is just behind her and then with a sniggering laugh he swings out an arm and slaps her ass.

She whirls around, and on pure instinct Len starts to move, but then he realizes that there is a cry of pain ringing out from the scene and it isn’t Sara. It’s Theodor, because Sara has his wrist bent back so far that his knuckles are practically scraping his forearm.

“Hands to yourself,” she tells him coldly before she shoves him onto his back on the ground. She keeps her expression neutral, if only a little on the pissed side, as she collects her dinner and walks over to where he’s seated at the edge of the deck, a small smirk finally breaking through her features as she gets closer.

He smirks in return.

“Not bad,” It’s probably the nicest thing he’s ever said to her, and for that he feels a tad guilty, but it’s been necessary.

“Why thank you,” she is being far too smug about this, but it just might work for her. This woman slurping down dirty water like it’s nothing, occasionally opening her mouth wider to get a piece of the meat, is certainly not the same terrified girl who they found in the water months ago. This woman, he’s starting to think, could rule this place if she wanted to.

It may sound like one, but he isn’t so sure that’s a good thing.

* * *

 

More months pass by and Sara becomes something of a friend to him, not that he has friends but whatever. They still spar every day; she’s kicking his ass a lot more often than not now. She’s gotten much better at her job, something he’s grateful for but it still leaves a vile taste in his mouth every time she picks up that knife. He’s watched that kid they yanked on board months ago disappear from her eyes with every passing day, replaced by this stone cold woman who could probably carve out at least five of his organs before killing him. He knows it’s stupid to hold onto the memory of that kid, to wish that she didn’t have to go, because if she didn’t than Sara would be dead. Still, he hates that this has happened to her. Most of them here, not all of them but most, belong here. If they weren’t on The Amazo then they would be rotting in some other prison. But from what she’s told him during their card games Sara had a promising life before all of this. She has two loving parents who he’s sure mourned her when she was undoubtedly reported dead. She has a sister as well, whom she insists was probably too angry with her to mourn but Len knows that isn’t true. From what she’s said it sounds like she and her sister are close, apart from the whole “running off with her boyfriend” fiasco, and he knows that if Laurel cares for Sara even half as much as he cares for Lisa she would’ve been devastated when she heard the news.

“What do you think will happen to us once Ivo gets his super serum?” She asks one night as they’re lying out on the rooftop just looking up at the stars, their cards long tucked back into Leonard’s pocket.

“Well, you’re assuming that it actually exists.” He points out, turning his head over just enough to see her chuckle. She knows by now that he thinks Ivo’s Mirakuru is nothing but a wild goose chase.

“Well assuming it does,” she begins, pausing so that she can roll onto her side and face him, propping her head up on her hand. “Humor me.”

He thinks it over for a second, not that he hasn’t already thought about this small possibility; he does plan for every conceivable eventuality, after all.

“Hopefully he won’t use us as guinea pigs,” he wishes he were kidding about that. “Otherwise… I don’t know.” He does know, actually, or rather he has an idea. If Ivo finds the super serum and it actually works he just might let anyone he no longer needs go home if they wish. That would include a navigator, since he won’t be sailing anymore, but he’ll still have use for a right hand.

He’ll still have use for Sara.

She nods and settles back onto her back, a frown on her face like she knows what he’s thinking but doesn’t want to hear it any more than he wants to say it. Suddenly the silence between them doesn’t feel comfortable, and he has this urge to make this situation better, somehow.

He can only think of one way, and it goes against every sensible fiber of his being.

“If something goes… wrong.” He eventually speaks up, “If Ivo turns on us, I memorize maps of our stops before we get there. Stay behind me.” She nods, her face serious, because _us_ suddenly doesn’t mean the guards or other members of the crew, but the two of them. This is dangerous territory that they’re treading into, maybe even deadly, and they both know it.

So why do they just keep going in further?


	2. Time to Choose a Side

He’s stopped counting how long it’s been since Sara came aboard the ship, but if Leonard had to guess he would say that it’s been somewhere close to a year at this point. She is still, to an extent, known around the ship as Ivo’s pet, but most of the men have a certain respect for her by now. She still spends her nights in a haphazardly sectioned off corner of privacy in Ivo’s cabin, which is most likely for the best. As for the two of them… well, they’re friends. Len can’t deny that he is attracted to Sara, how could he not be? He’s pretty sure she is at least a little bit attracted to him as well, given that their conversations have at some point developed into mutual flirtation. But they can’t risk ever actually acting on these somewhat masked feelings, not here. It’s too dangerous to be anything more than friends in a place like this, and even that is a risk.

It’s just as well, Leonard tells himself, as he’s never been particularly good at relationships.

He tries to keep his mind off of it, off of the impossible, by focusing on Ivo and his delusional treasure hunt. They’re back in the North China Sea at the moment, not too far from the area where they found Sara, only now Ivo has brought them to some small map dot of an island where he is convinced the secret to the Mirakuru is buried. Leonard is fully expecting this to be another dead end, and result in nothing but them hiking for a week, so when the scout group returned yesterday with a new prisoner, well, he was intrigued.

That intrigue soon turns into confusion, however, when Sara’s arm comes flying out from a dark corner of the ship and yanks him in.

“Gah! What the hell Lance?” He growls at her more out of surprise than actual anger.

“It’s Oliver,” She tells him simply, sternly, her eyes fierce and scared all at once.

He blinks.

She’s told him about Oliver numerous times, how he’s the reason that she’s in this hellhole. He’s the one who brought her on that stupid boat that sank, he’s the one who kept telling her to relax when she was getting worried about the storm getting too close to their ship.

He’s the one she was crawling into bed with.

A feeling flashes through him at that thought, a feeling that he doesn’t quite have a name for but is hoping it isn’t jealousy. No, jealousy would mean that there is something for him to be jealous of, thus would mean he actually has an opinion on this situation.

Dammit.

“Did he recognize you?” She gives him the most deadpan look, _“Really Snart?”_ Written all over her face as she stands there with her arms crossed.

“Of course he recognized me!” She seethes through gritted teeth and actually swats him.

“Ok, ok.” He relents, shoving her hand away from him with no actual force behind it. “Does Ivo know who he is?”

She looks afraid now; in a way that he hasn’t seen since the day she was pulled from the water.

“No,” she answers, “He told him his name is Tommy, and he was the only survivor of the crash.”

Len nods, and he knows that she must have been the one to tell Oliver to lie, to keep them both safe. He can’t be sure if Oliver is trying to protect Sara or just himself, but for now his actions are keeping her safe.

“Ok,” That’s about all Len can think to say. This is one situation he never could have foreseen. He has no idea where they’re supposed to go from here, what he’s supposed to do with this information. Regardless of Sara’s feelings towards Oliver, even if he isn’t quite sure what those are, the fact that she’s shared any of this with him speaks volumes about her trust in him.

If anyone other than him finds out about her connection to the new prisoner, especially Ivo, she will die. But he won’t let that happen, he can’t.

Damn his feelings.

“Ok, stop crying.” He eventually finds himself ordering her, and she wipes away the tears in her eyes obediently. “For now we need to act like he is any other informant, willing or unwilling. Go down into the prison and explain that to him.”

“But-”

“Sara,” he cuts her off, his hands flying onto her shoulders almost of their own accord. “You will both end up dead otherwise, understand?”

She takes a moment, like she’s running a few different scenarios in her head, and then she nods.

“Yes.” Just like that he sees her steel walls rising back up, like they never went down.

 

* * *

 

She betrays Oliver.

She tells Ivo who he is, she tricks him into outing his friends on the island, and now she’s gearing up to join the hike out to kill them. He isn’t sure whose side it is that she’s playing, nor which side he wants her to play, but he does know that at this rate it isn’t going to end well for anybody involved.

“You going to burry your boyfriend when you find these graves?” He lets his voice enter Ivo’s cabin before he does, a bit of a warning that he is about to lecture her.

By the time he sidles up against the doorway she is already giving him that very same look that she did yesterday when he asked if Oliver had recognized her. It’s a little different this time, more tired, and eventually she returns to her task of loading her gun.

“Just trying to stay alive,” The pause after that is filled with a heavy silence, one that Leonard isn’t sure how to break.

He starts by peeling himself from the doorway and sauntering over to her, his arms folding over each other as he leans over the opposite side of the desk so that he is at eye level with her.

“I’ve been on a lot of heists, and even when things got rough I never took out one of my own.” This may not be the best advice to give her right now, given that this philosophy is the very reason he’s in this hellhole in the first place and she knows that, but the sentiment still rings true. If he could go back he would do a lot of things differently, but if it came down to it all over again he would still end up here because he would never allow the alternative.

“Well this isn’t a bank heist,” she curtly reminds him, “And Ollie isn’t one of my own.”

_“He’s only Ollie when you’re saying good things about him,”_ The words are on the tip of his tongue, the reminder that “Oliver” is the asshole who left her to drown, while “Ollie” is the charming boy who all but asked her to run away with him. They’ve had enough conversation about him for Leonard to know the difference that Sara seems to be forgetting, but he doesn’t remind her. It’s all the same to him anyway.

“We’re all just pawns, Sara.” He tells her instead, his voice almost a whisper but still very much his usual Snart drawl. “Come on, I have the maps, you have the knives, and Ollie has the information.”

“What’s your point?” She snaps at him, her gun flat on the table and hands firmly on either side of it.

He stares her down for a moment, let’s her cool down, and then…

“My point is,” he begins, leaning just a hair closer to her. “That this is a very dangerous game, and it’s very important that whatever team you’re on, it’s the one you want to be on.”

 

* * *

 

Turns out she isn’t the one who gets to make that decision.

Oliver leads Ivo and the rest of their little scouting party to a cave filled with dead bodies, but apparently that isn’t enough for Ivo. He’s after some hosen, a hosen he is convinced Oliver and his friends have stolen. To make matters worse these friends decide to make an appearance, and they aren’t exactly in any mood to cooperate. One thing leads to another and then the men are shooting because Oliver is loose and running off at high speed with his friends, and Sara, because he grabbed her when he made a break for it.

Oh, maybe that’s why Leonard has found himself running after them as opposed to shooting like he probably should have.

Then, of course, like it’s a sign from the universe that he should NOT be chasing after some girl a gang of killers pulled out of the ocean, a wall of fire and smoke erupts all around him; not even giving him time to scream.

 

* * *

 

She’s running.

She wasn’t planning on running, ever, but then Oliver grabbed her by the arm and Snart followed after them so she’s still going. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she does know that she can’t turn back, so she keeps running. She is standing between Oliver and the man with burns on his face, burns that Ivo’s men caused. The woman in the hood is behind him, and behind her Snart is catching up.

Then she hears the explosion.

Stopping in her tracks Sara whirls around only to be met by the horrifying sight of fire dancing before her eyes.

“LEONARD!” The cry of his name tears from her throat and her feet are already running back without any consent from her mind.

But Ollie’s friend is quick, even with his injuries, and as he shouts for her to stop screaming his strong arms wind around her middle and fight against her. A part of her hears Ollie’s voice joining the shouts, but she pays the words no mind. She is too busy screaming, her tear coated eyes looking for some sign of the only friend she’s had in the past year even as she’s loaded onto Ollie’s shoulder and fire starts to fade into the distance.

 Ollie puts her down… sometime later. Not long, probably only a few minutes, tears are still streaming down her face and he and his friend in the hood have to step away from her to talk.

“Shut up,” the man with the burns half gasps, half snarls at her. She’s barely even registered that she is verbally crying, and his words bring her back to the harsh reality that she can’t afford to be crying like this.

Ollie and his other friend come back right about now, and the burned man throws his hands up in exasperation only to nearly fall over with the effort and so the hooded girl has to hurry to catch him.

“Why…” he can barely speak through his injuries, but even with half his weight leaning on the girl and his body swaying back and forth he manages to point an accusing finger at Oliver. “Why do we have her!?”

He points over at her now, at her pathetic sniffling form, and Ollie gives her an uneasy look.

“It’s complicated,” he decides to answer with before turning to the woman in the hood. They start talking about the hosen, which the girl apparently has around her neck, and she reads off the coordinates inscribed on it.

“To what?” she asks and it’s then that Sara realizes she is stuck here, stuck with them, and she has a choice to make. They’re going to follow those coordinates one way or another, so she needs to decide whether she is going to help them or just sulk along as dead weight.

She is almost tempted to go with the second option, but the stories that Ivo has told her about what’s hidden in the destination inscribed on the hosen are echoing through her mind, and if she can find Leonard…

“A Kairyu –class Japanese submarine,” her words draw the attention of the others, and wiping at her eyes she brings herself to her feet. “It ran aground here during World War II.”

“What do these guys want with a seventy-year-old sub?” The injured man asks her doubtfully.

“The sub isn’t important,” she admits, “But what’s on it? It could save the human race.” She’s never been entirely sure if she believes in the Mirakuru or not, Leonard doesn’t, or didn’t. But now she has to believe, for Leonard’s sake.

“Can it save him?” Ollie asks, nodding towards his friend with the burns who looks like he is about to pass out.

“Yes,” she answers with an eager nod, “And the man you blew up.”

“What?” Ollie doesn’t quite snap at her, but he does look angry, and hood girl moves one hand protectively up to an arrow in her quiver.

“He’s my friend,” she says, and the word sends a pang of hurt through her heart, even if she’s never admitted it aloud a part of her knows that Leonard is worth more to her than just a friend. “The only one I’ve had for the past year.” That part is true, not that the first isn’t but feelings can be messy things.

“Congratulations, but we still don’t know who you are. Let alone who that man is.” The hooded girl says to her coldly, bluntly, and with a sigh that’s when Ollie steps up to explain.

“She’s my friend,” he tells the girl calmly, “This is Sara,” The girl’s eyes grow slightly when Ollie says her name, and then he turns to her. “Sara this is Shado,” He introduces the girl before gesturing to the burned man. “And Slade Wilson.”

She nods, “I have to go back for Le… for Snart.” She almost says his name, but she stops herself. She doesn’t know how he would feel about her referring to him by his first name, especially around people whom he doesn’t even know. “Without him I would’ve died a long time ago.”

Ollie nods, understanding, and then looks to Shado.

“We need to keep moving,”

“We can’t double back,” she tells him, voice almost pleading and when she turns her head Sara sees that her eyes are just as apologetic.

“No,” Ollie agrees and Sara opens her mouth to argue but he meets her eyes. “Not yet,” that doesn’t make her feel any better. “We’ll put a little more distance between us and Ivo and then go back tomorrow for your friend.”

“He’ll be dead by then!” She shouts, “If he isn’t dead already!”

“Sara-”

“No!” She’s pissed, the rage bubbling up inside of her and exploding out of her mouth. A year ago The Gambit sunk, a year ago she drowned, and without Snart a year ago would’ve been the day that she died. “If we don’t go back for him now Ivo will get to him first and he will kill him for running after me.”

“How do you know that?” Ollie challenges, “Sara the men on that ship are all monsters, how can you even be sure this Snart guy wasn’t going to hand you back over to Ivo if he caught you?”

Sara just gapes at him, her arms crossed over her chest and lips parted in disbelief, even if there is one small part of her that isn’t surprised.

“Those monsters look out for each other, more or less.” She tells him, taking a sauntering step towards him and locking her gaze with his. “Don’t forget who it was that set you up to expose these two.” She gestures to his friends, and then she turns and leaves. She is a little surprised that they let her go, maybe even a little disappointed, but not unsurprised.

She doesn’t need them anyway; Shado read the coordinates out loud, she and Leonard can find their way to the sub by themselves.

After she finds him.


	3. The Ties That Bind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long to get up! This story requires a lot of rewatching island scenes from Arrow and lately my writing time has been limited to in between class transitions/during theatre rehearsals when I'm not on stage, so I can't really put my headphones in and watch a scene. I'm finding time when I can to do the research so I hope you guys like the chapter!

When Leonard opens is eyes he is chained in a cell on the Amazo, Ivo staring smugly down at him.

“Hello Mr. Snart,” he greets with the sadistic smile that he normally reserves for “special” victims. “Miss Lance is gone, as I’m sure you’re aware, you did chase after her.”  
Len huffs, eyes darting around and sizing up his current predicament. He’s in an empty cell, arms chained up in the long shackles attached to the ceiling and keeping him on his knees, a position that he is slowly becoming aware is more painful than it should be. Looking back to try and find the reason for this he sees that his jeans are ripped up and when he tries to move his left leg he instead cries out in agony, eyes catching a glimpse of his bone as he turns away.

“Ooo,” Ivo seethes through his teeth with false sympathy, “Yeah, that’s going to hurt for awhile.” He says before entering the cage and getting down to his level, a sick move that almost make Leonard wish the man would just kill him.

“Unless, of course.” He muses evilly, “We find the Mirakuru.”

Let it be known that the thought of death is becoming increasingly appealing the longer that he is being forced to look at Ivo, to watch the scheming wheels in his head turn. Leonard is no stranger to the monster that the man before him is capable of being, and while his body seems to understand that it can’t simply drop dead right here and now passing out is looking like a viable option, but he isn’t quite ready for that just yet.

“They have the hosen,” he reminds Ivo through painfully gritted teeth, “The map.”

The smirk on the other man’s face is enough to send Leonard’s heart down into the pit of his stomach, it landing harshly against some internal bleeding.

“True,” Ivo admits, “But another thing they have is Miss Lance, and I’m sure that she’ll be coming back for you.”

“She won’t,” Len grits through his teeth, the pain in his leg getting worse by the second. “She’s not stupid.”

He’s pretty sure that Ivo laughs at him, but he can’t be positive, as that is when he finally gives into the pain and passes out.

 

* * *

 

He isn’t there.

By the time that Sara gets back to where the bomb went off, and it is not a hard spot to find, Leonard is gone. She checks all around the perimeter of the blast and then some, but he just isn’t there. A part of her is relieved, as that means the blast didn’t kill him. But, on the other hand, she doubts that even his stubborn ass just got up and walked away from this. Which means that someone dragged him away and, yep, there is a nice, body shaped rut of flattened grass and disturbed dirt over at the edge of a few trees and leading back to where the botched negotiation had taken place.

Letting out a huff Sara starts pacing back and forth as she tries to think. Leonar- Snart, ran after her. He had no possible motivation other than a desire to protect her, which Ivo has undoubtedly figured out. But if he wanted to kill Snart over the weakness of caring he would have done so right here and left his body in the grass for her find. So Snart must be alive and with the crew of the Amazo, a bait of sorts for her.

She growls in frustration, she knows that she can’t take on Ivo and his men all on her own, let alone get Snart out of there alive. Then again, maybe she won’t have to.

Ivo is not a patient man, not when he’s gotten a taste of what he wants. Whenever he thinks he might have a lead on the Mirakuru the rational part of his brain tends to shut down, overpowered by his eagerness to claim the serum. He can figure out that she’s told Ollie about the sub and the treasure aboard it, as well as he can figure that Ollie will want to take Slade there in order to save his life. He won’t want to waste time, he’ll send men tracking and following them, and he’ll want to go along.

She nods to herself, that’s a plan.

She starts heading back towards the beach, back towards the ship, so that she can be ready to move the second that it’s relatively safe. When she reaches the area where the trees start to thin and the dirt fades into sand she begins to examine the towers of bark all around her, looking for one that will be suitable for her stakeout. She knows she has to choose quickly, as Ivo could have spies stationed around the perimeter looking for her, or he could just start coming now.

She decides on a tall tree with only one low hanging branch inches above her head, just low enough that she can jump to grab it. She pulls herself up with some difficulty; Snart didn’t exactly train her in free climbing, and then scales the rest of the branches with ease. She settles herself deep enough in a high shroud of leaves that she shouldn’t be spotted, but she can see the ship.

Now, she waits.

 

* * *

 

When Len comes to, well to be honest he’s a little surprised that he’s come to. Of course Ivo wouldn’t allow him to be killed while unconscious; that would be far too merciful. It’s the pain in his leg that wakes him up, and it doesn’t feel like he’s been out for very long, so at least there isn’t much that could’ve happened between his passing out and now.

Yet, despite that, he finds that he’s alone.

There are still the usual prisoners on either side of him in their own respective cages, but the guards are all gone.

“They found her,” A deep, solemn voice with a heavy accent sounds out from next to him.

Turning his head he sees that there is a skinny, hollow-faced man with a beard on his left side; looking at him with what he could swear to be sorrow.

“Found who?” He spits through the intense pain, even though there is already a nauseous feeling settling in his stomach, one that he knows isn’t coming entirely from the pain.

“Who do you think?” The man questions, “Your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Leonard all but seethes, however the man only scoffs a laugh at him.

“Right, and I am not rotting away in this torture chamber.” The man scoffs, “Whatever she is to you, Ivo and his men found her hiding in the trees outside the ship. They are bringing her along as bargaining tool, in case long haired man finds the Mirakuru and doesn’t want to part with it.”

Leonard can actually feel the color, what’s left of it anyway, draining from his face at that news. Sara may not have chosen to be dragged off by Oliver, but she still ran once he grabbed her. The damage is done in Ivo’s eyes, and even if he _does_ intend to use her as a bargaining chip it isn’t going to be a fair trade. The crackpot is going to kill her.

He isn’t going to let that happen.

“I need to get out of here.” He snarls and, unsurprisingly, the man scoffs at him.

“Good luck,” He says, rather sarcastically.

“I’m serious!”

“I know,” The man chuckles, “That’s what makes it so amusing.”

Len does his best to glare at the man, which he is pretty sure falls flat, and then he just shakes his head in annoyance. He can’t exactly deny that he has feelings for Sara, not when he’s kneeling here chained up with a broken leg and yet all he can think about is whether she’s still alive or not.

Ugh, he really hates feelings.

 

* * *

 

She is going to die.

There are tears in her eyes that refuse to fall as Sara kneels in the dirt with her wrists bound behind her back. Ollie is in front of her, screaming, begging Ivo to reconsider and that this isn’t fair, but she knows it isn’t going to do any good.

“Time’s up,” Ivo announces and it takes everything that she has in her to keep from sniffling with the tears, a last ditch effort of self-preservation.

 _“I’m sorry Leonard,”_ she thinks to herself, regret coursing through her veins as she thinks of all of the mistakes she’s made, of Laurel and her parents, but mostly at the idea that Leonard is probably going to die in the next few hours as well, if he hasn’t already. All thanks to her.

Then Ollie is shoving his way between her and Shado, kneeling before Ivo himself, and it’s the final straw. She starts gasping with the effort it’s taking to hold her tears back, a failed effort by the way. She hears Ivo say something, though she can’t tell what it is over the sound of her own tears, but she knows it means that everything here is about to come to an end.

She is about to come to an end.

Sure enough, the gun sounds out and her body jolts, but doesn’t fall. There is no pain, no dirt in her eyes because she hasn’t crashed to the ground, and she turns her head to the side to see Shado collapsed in a heap, dead.

Ivo has spared her.

Ollie cries out, but she remains quiet. She sees Ollie slump over beside his friend, and a part of her knows she should try and move closer to them, but she’s frozen in her place. There is still air coming in and out of her mouth, still watery tears falling shamelessly from her eyes, still little rocks digging into her knees.

She is still alive.

The reprieve doesn’t last, however, if she could even call it a reprieve. Before she knows it, before anyone knows it actually, all hell is suddenly breaking loose. One minute it’s quiet, the only sounds being those of the wind and a mx of her and Oliver’s tears, and the next all but a very few of Ivo’s men have been thrown halfway across this small clearing like ragdolls and Slade Wilson is standing in their place, snapping one of their assault rifles in half with his bare hands.

She watches in shock as Ivo jumps both Oliver and Shado, then proceeds to hightail an escape through the trees like a cartoon character. His remaining men follow his example, save for one, who has the gall to approach Slade and as a reward the man who Sara watched die not even an hour ago rips the poor guard’s heart right out of his chest.

She looks on in terror as, with all Ivo’s men now either dead or run off, Slade’s eyes fall to Shado’s body.

He is surprisingly careful as he approaches her, but the look of horror on his face has Sara holding her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Slade circles around his deceased friend, possibly more than that based on the look in his eyes, and as he inspects her bloodied head Sara suddenly feels sick. She can’t help but to imagine herself in Slade’s position, Leonard lying dead at her feet, and the rage boils inside her just at the thought. Suddenly it feels like her time has been limited once again, like Ivo is still going to shoot her. Only it isn’t a gun she fears now, but a fist. The scene she just witnessed of that guard falling dead, his heart torn from his chest, plays through her mind like a warning. She’s next. Slade is going to find out Ollie was supposed to choose between her and Shado, and he isn’t going to care that Ivo ended up choosing for him.

He’s sunk to his knees beside Shado at this point, is cradling her against him and when he looks up her blood is smeared across his cheek.

“What?” He doesn’t need to ask any further, and frankly Sara isn’t even sure if he can.

“I-”

“Ivo just shot her,” she blurts before Ollie can get another word out. She doesn’t mean to cut him off, but at the same time if he tells Slade the truth then he will kill them both, and she did not just escape death only to be condemned to it once again.

“He didn’t say why,” she lets herself continue, Slade now getting to his feet and lifting Shado into his arms as he rises.

“Whoever did this to her to her,” he declares, “Is going to suffer.”

* * *

 

They head back to what’s left of the plane, it’s the safest place for them considering Ivo’s already blown it up. They keep Shado’s body outside, the decision made that they’ll burry her in the morning, and Slade stays with her. That’s fine by Sara, even though she knows she won’t be able to sleep tonight no matter what, she would still rather have him out there as opposed to in here.

“Who is he?” Ollie’s broken and grief stricken voice breaks the silence and Sara looks up to find him staring at her.

“Who?”

“Snart.”

She adverts her gaze from his, eyes darting back down to her lap. In all honesty she isn’t sure how she should go about answering this question.

“A friend,” she answers, though Ollie clearly isn’t buying it.

“I know that much,” he says, rolling his eyes, but his words make her angry and she snaps her eyes up to his.

“He’s kept me alive for the past year Ollie,” She snaps, “Without him, Ivo’s men would’ve killed me along time ago, soon as they were finished with me.” He looks confused by her words for only a second before he understands and has the decency to look away.

“When you sold me out,” he starts the conversation again, looking back at her with a new conviction. “Was it real?”

She purses her lips as she processes the question, Ollie staring her down and waiting for her answer.

“Sara?”

She doesn’t answer, and eventually he realizes what that means, so he sighs and turns away from her, lying down to go to sleep. She tries to follow his example, but sleep doesn’t come easy, and for the most part she spends the night staring up at the stars through the hole in the roof, trying to figure out how in the hell she’s going to save Leonard if not with Mirakuru. Considering what she’s seen with Slade thus far, paired with documents of research she’s read on the ship, she doesn’t want to put that into his system.

So the tears start to form again, because now she has to face the reality that Leonard might truly be dead.

 

* * *

 

When Ivo comes into the prison deck, Len is expecting him to have his gun already out and pointed. The fact that he doesn’t is his first clue that something bigger than his own death is about to go down. His second clue is the long look of “I warned you” that is etched into the other man’s features. The third comes in the way that he stands silent in front of the cage door, hands clasped in front of him as he stares downwards and Len forces himself to look up.

He doesn’t say anything; he just tosses a long string of beads with one dangly red tassel in the center through the bars. Leonard stares at the necklace in front of him in shock as the other man walks away without a word, face stoic as ever. He can feel the bile rising in his throat; he didn’t think Ivo would actually do it. The scientist always had a soft spot for Sara, her innocence making her a child in his eyes that needed protecting.

Only he didn’t protect her, not after she crossed the line.

Like all the others who have ever shown even the slightest disobedience, Sara Lance is now dead.


	4. Every Thought Leads to You

Ollie doesn’t say a word to her when they set out the next morning, and neither does Slade.

That’s ok with Sara; for the most part she doesn’t want to talk to either of them. They burry Shado alongside two other graves, and she looks away when she notices that one of those graves belongs to Robert Queen. They continue on after that and it doesn’t take very long for Slade to lose his temper, the Mirakuru coursing through his veins making it all the easier.

“Ivo is still out there,” He firmly reminds them, a mix of pain and fury in his brown eyes. “I’m gonna find him and when I do I’m gonna cut pieces of him off.”

Well, that’s violent, but not unexpected after what happened last night.

“You can’t.” Sara tells him, “Ivo has a ship full of men, of killers. I don’t care what you did before, you can’t take them all out.” She knows he isn’t listening, not with the way he’s looking at her like he’s already envisioning her corpse lying bloody at his feet. He’s pissed as is, but with the Mirakuru whispering into his thoughts, well, she might as well be asking a bomb to keep from detonating.

Still, if any sense can be talked into him, the better it will be for all of them.

“Your only play here is to find safe ground and wait him out.”

“Well of course you would say that,” The words aren’t quite a snarl, but something close to it, and the hatred in his eyes as he stalks towards her makes her wonder if he can see right through her, if he can somehow tell she’s already tried that plan of waiting Ivo out and it’s failed. “You were working for Ivo. You’re probably still working for him!”

She steps back and he matches her movement, leaning into her face with an animalistic roar even as Ollie puts himself between them and tries to push the other man away.

For a second it actually looks like he might be able to keep the peace in their little group, but then everything turns on it’s head and Slade suddenly has him held up by the throat.

“I said,” the bigger man snarls, “Get out of my way!”

Sara stands back, watching in horror as the life starts to drain from Ollie’s eyes and his flailing body falls still. She feels the bile rising in her throat, she can’t. She can’t let this happen, she can’t lose Ollie. Not now. Not with Snart gone, she can’t lose him too. She also can’t take Slade out, and if she dares to try he’ll just finish Ollie off before killing her. She has to bring him down, not only physically but also mentally. Looking around desperately, as though something will jump out and give her an answer, she spots a fallen branch and decides it’s the best option she has right now. So she lifts it and knocks it hard against Slade’s shoulder, forcing him to drop Oliver, and then holds it up in defense of herself when Slade turns to deal with her.

But the sight of her, half his size and holding a branch larger than herself aimed at him like a baseball bat, seems to be enough to ground him back in reality. He looks down at Ollie, gasping desperately to refill his lungs with oxygen, and then to his own clenched fist.

He doesn’t say anything, neither does she, and as Ollie’s breaths finally start to even out the heavy quiet becomes deafening. Eventually Slade starts to lower himself to the ground, glassy tears shining in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, sincerely enough that Sara finds herself beginning to relax and lower her makeshift weapon, out of pity if nothing else.

Slade looks broken, but why shouldn’t he? The way he clutched Shado’s body to his chest upon discovering her dead, how he sat beside her all through last night, the look on his face at the burial this morning; it’s all flying through Sara’s mind like pieces of a puzzle as she abruptly realizes what Shado really meant to him. She thinks of Leonard, and how he’s dead. How she wants to hope that Ivo might have decided his navigator is worth more to him alive rather than dead but she isn’t sure she has it in her. She thinks about all those nights spent sparring and playing cards, of all the times she would lie awake and wonder about if she had been able to meet him in the real world, instead on board the hell ship. She thinks of the night when she asked him about what might happen if Ivo were to actually find the Mirakuru. She thinks of what he said to her.

_“Stay behind me.”_

“It’s ok,” she says, Ollie still struggling to his feet. She discards her branch and approaches Slade like she would a wounded animal. “It’s the Mirakuru, it’s messing with your head.” She tells him firmly, “You need to fight it, ok?” He doesn’t look like he’s entirely convinced, so she crouches down to his level. “Look I know you’re angry, I know you think I can’t but I do. Shado isn’t the only person who Ivo killed yesterday. He killed Snart.”

“Your friend.” It isn’t a question that Slade growls at her, but an offended statement.

“My Shado.” She clarifies and the look on his face, she can actually see the hate clearing from his eyes, quickly replaced by sorrow.

He doesn’t say anything to her, there’s nothing he could say. Just saying something like that, somewhat admitting that she cared for Leonard in a way far past that of a friend, and now he’s gone before she got a chance to act on her feelings, it settles an ache deep in her heart that no words could help heal.

So she straightens up, her walls rising firmly back into place. “We need to keep moving.” She doesn’t say why, and neither Ollie nor Slade asks her. They all know the reason.

Ivo isn’t finished with them yet.

 

* * *

 

They’ve set his leg, and Leonard couldn’t say why if his life depended on it. Ivo obviously needs him alive for something, but what that is he isn’t sure he wants to know. At this point he isn’t sure whether he’s better off alive or dead. He’s inclined to believe the latter but that brings him to some thoughts he would rather not entertain, so he tries to focus on something else. He thinks about home, about Lisa and Mick, and winds up wondering what they would’ve thought of Sara.

Mick would’ve laughed in his face, of that much he’s sure. Then, when he would try to punish his longtime friend for getting him thrown on this ship to begin with the other man would simply argue that had he not been on The Amazo he never would’ve met Sara. Lisa would’ve loved her. Without question, she would’ve latched onto Sara like she was the sister she never had. She would’ve given him some crap for coming back from a prison ship with a girl, but all out of love.

He really needs to stop thinking about this.

But what else is he supposed to think about?

He could think about how Lisa and Mick both probably think he’s already dead. Hell, they probably finished mourning his death months ago. The look on Mick’s face when he was taken by Ivo’s men, or more accurately when he let Ivo’s men take him in Mick’s place, the look on the other man’s face told him all he needed to know.

The chances of him ever returning home have always been nonexistent, and his family knows it.

He could think about the fact that he hasn’t heard a peep or seen even the slightest sign of Ivo all day, and that’s almost as unnerving as the fact that he’s still alive. He could think about the fact that he is probably going to be Ivo’s next guinea pig, just like he could think about how that damned necklace is still sitting in front of him, his arms still chained up so that he can’t reach it.

All in all, every thought somehow leads him back to the same subject.

Sara.

* * *

 

The dirt of the forest floor is actually a little more comfortable than the hard metal floor and scratchy blanket that she’s been sleeping on top of for the past year, Sara thinks to herself as she closes her eyes and tries to drift off to sleep, though not as comfortable as the cold roof of The Amazo’s Captaining station. Slade isn’t sleeping even remotely close to where she and Oliver are, an attempt to dissuade his subconscious from killing them in their sleep. She isn’t sure if he’s being overly cautious or not, but unlike Ollie she didn’t try talking him out of it, so maybe that decision speaks for itself.

“Sara.”

The sound of her name cuts off her thoughts and has her stirring awake, Ollie as well.

“Sara, I know you’re listening, answer me.”

It’s Ivo, and briefly her heart freezes in her chest, thinking he’s found them. But then Ollie picks up the walkie-talkie lying between them and she reaches for it even before she registers that Ivo doesn’t know where she is. She wants to tell him off, to scream at him, to threaten him. More than that there is a small voice in the back of her mind telling her that he, by some miracle, might not have actually killed Snart yet, and she wants to demand to talk to him. But Ollie withholds the walkie-talkie, shaking his head at her in denial of her request even as Ivo’s words continue.

“This is very simple, Sara. I know you and your new friends have the Mirakuru, something you know that I want very much. Now, interestingly enough, I have something you want; Mr. Snart.”

He’s alive.

Her eyes go wide and her throat goes dry, her heart pounding against her ribcage as that voice in her head goes from whispering to full out screaming. Without actually thinking the idea through she finds herself tackling Ollie for the small radio, wrestling him into the dirt until she gets what she wants and slams her fingers against the button.

“I want to talk to him!” She demands, brushing hair from her face and climbing off of her old friend, not really caring if she ends up accidently kicking some dirt into his face. “You hear me, you bastard? I want to talk to him!”

The other end is nothing but static for an instant, to which she could swear that Ivo is smirking with sadistic glee back on his ship.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Sara.” His cold voice finally returns her order. “Call it a contingency plan. You see, Mr. Snart is _much_ easier to hold as a prisoner when his spirits are broken, meaning that for the moment, it makes things easier on me if he believes you to be dead.”

Her vision turns red when she hears that. Easier her ass, if he’s told Leonard that she’s dead then he’s done it out of his own sick affinity for psychological torture.

That is, assuming Leonard feels about her being dead in the same way she feels about him being dead.

“You son of a bitch,” she growls and, again, she can practically hear him smirking to himself.

“Now Sara, you know that flattery isn’t the way to get what you want from me.” He says, “Bring the Mirakuru to the beach by sunset tomorrow and you can have Mr. Snart, then I’ll take the Mirakuru and be on my merry way. Fail to show up and I will lay waste to this entire island until I find what I’m looking for, and that includes you and your friends. The four of you will have the honor as serving as my latest… how do you and Mr. Snart put it when you think nobody’s listening? My guinea pigs?” He says and her eyes become even the slightest bit wider, though she can’t say for sure why. Something about that, about learning that he’s apparently had eyes and/or ears on her and Leonard in moments when they thought they were alone, it’s unsettling; even if they never said nor did anything that could make this situation worse.

“See you tomorrow Sara.” He says confidently before his voice is replaced by static.

Slowly, she brings her head up to look at Ollie, and she can see in his eyes that he doesn’t want to even consider the offer.

Under other circumstances she might be able to understand that, maybe even agree with it. But Ivo has essentially put Leonard’s life in her hands, how can she refuse him?

“Slade!” She shouts, getting to her feet.

“Hey! Sara wait!” Ollie tries to shout over her, as well as follow her, but she’s already rushing off to the trees where Slade had laid down for the night.

“Slade!” She continues to shout, fear creeping in as she reaches the trees and realizes that the man she is yelling for isn’t here. “Slade!”

She turns to Ollie, who’s stopped in his tracks, because he’s realized the same thing she has. Slade is gone, and he took what’s left of the Mirakuru with him.

“Slade!” Sara screams out again, and this time Oliver echoes her. They continue shouting into the darkness of the night but it’s no use, the only replies that they get come from the crickets in the trees.

“He better not have gone to take on Ivo by himself,” Oliver grumbles and Sara can’t help but to roll her eyes, a small growl of annoyance rumbling at the back of her throat.

“Where else would he go, Ollie?” The question comes out as completely sarcastic, though she does mean it as at least partially serious, because while she is almost completely positive that Slade has taken off after Ivo, Ollie does know him better and if there is a chance that he has gone somewhere _other_ than on a suicide mission, well then she would like to know.

“I…” Ollie stammers, still looking hopelessly around the forest that surrounds them. “I don’t know. Maybe… maybe he went back to the plane?” It sounds to be more of a desperate hope than an actual possibility.

“If he tries taking on Ivo alone-”

“I know, Sara!” Ollie cuts her off, a sudden anger in his blue-gray eyes. “I know, but you saw what he did to Ivo’s men. Maybe-”

“Maybe what, Ollie?” She snaps, turning on her heel and rounding on him. “Ivo has a small army of ruthless killers with him, all of whom are going to be on high alert after what happened last night. Slade can’t take them all out on his own.”

“I know but…” He trails, looking around like he’s waiting for his next words to fall out of the trees for him. “What do you want to do Sara? We can’t just hand the Mirakuru over to Ivo.”

He’s watching her for a reaction, she knows it, but she’s avoiding his eyes. On one hand she knows that he’s right. But on the other hand…

“What am I supposed to do?” She finds herself demanding, “He has Leonard. And besides, it isn’t like he’s a monster or anything like that. He-”

“A monster is exactly what he is!” Oliver snaps, suddenly furious and leaning into her personal space enough that she winds up taking half a step back. “What else would you call a man who shot an innocent woman in the back of the head! And you want to hand him some… some serum that will let him turn more people into monsters?”  
“He has Leonard!” She shouts back, “He’s kept me safe for a year, more than safe. He’s taught me things, he’s taught me how to take care of myself-”

“Ivo _says_ he has him!” Ollie sneers, “He could be lying! He wouldn’t let you talk to him; he’s refusing to give you any proof that he’s actually alive! What if he’s dead Sara?” He demands, “Huh? What then?” He gives her a second to answer, but she doesn’t take it. It’s not like she wouldn’t put it past Ivo to lie about Leonard’s fate, especially with the Mirakuru at stake.

Eventually Ollie must realize that she isn’t going to say anything, because he heaves a long, self-calming sigh. “Look,” he starts, “I get that you think this Snart, Leonard, whatever his name is, is your friend. But-”

“But nothing Ollie!” She seethes, “I should have died a year ago! But because of Leonard I didn’t. He saved me, now it’s my turn to save him. I won’t turn my back on him, I can’t.”

She means those words, she can’t. But she can turn her back on this; she can stop wasting her time arguing. So she does exactly that and starts walking away with Ollie still shouting after her to turn back around.

But she won’t, she needs to find Slade and the Mirakuru. She needs to save Leonard.

So she runs off into the trees until Oliver’s voice is nothing but a memory left behind in the distance.


	5. I'd Do Anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry that this has taken so long to get up! Real life has gotten really busy for me lately and will remain so for the rest of the month, but I'm trying to update whenever I can!

Sara isn’t sure how far she goes. How far she runs, how far she walks, how long she spends crying, or how long it’s been since she stopped. All she knows is that by the time the sun comes up her throat is raw and she has no idea where she is.

“SLADE!” She screams out for what must be the billionth time, but really she isn’t sure anymore. “SLADE!”

Nothing.

It’s just silence all around her.

Suddenly she feels like she’s drifting in the ocean again, completely and truly alone, with no sense as to which way she came from and which way she’s supposed to be going.

“SLADE!!!!” It’s useless but she’s desperate, and scared, and she has to save Leonard. After everything that he’s done for her, everything he’s risked for her - which she’s now realizing is so much more than she had originally thought, now that she knows Ivo doesn’t care an ounce for her – she owes him that much.

She’s crying again now, doubled over sobbing as she replays the events of the past two years in her mind’s eye. Leonard had taught her early on not to think about home. On The Amazo, there is no home. There is a place you were born, a place you grew up, but there is no place off of the ship in which you belong. At this point she feels that statement as more than a warning not to look beyond tomorrow. It feels true, like even if she were to make it home too much has changed for her to be sure she could still belong there. And Laurel… she’ll never forgive her for The Gambit if she makes it back; especially if Ollie doesn’t.

She left with Ollie. She _ran off_ with Ollie, if she were to make it home with Leonard and without Ollie…

She’s getting ahead of herself.

Ivo only promised her Leonard, not passage off the island. Besides, she and Leonard _are_ friends, even after he chased after her and inserted himself into this mess she can’t be positive that he feels for her in the way that she feels for him. Maybe in his mind they’re just friends. If they were to make it back together, there is no guarantee that they wouldn’t part ways within an instant of setting foot on American soil. What would she tell Laurel then? That she abandoned Ollie on a nearly deserted island for a man who turned away from her soon as he was able?

No. No Leonard wouldn’t do that. She has to believe that. After a year of late night card games, training sessions, and just plain talking the hours away until sunrise; she has to believe that he wouldn’t just walk out of her life.

“Quit your crying kid,” A voice suddenly interrupts her thoughts and she looks up to see what she can only describe as a godsend; Slade Wilson is marching out of the trees.

He looks pissed; she isn’t crying enough to be blind to that. But he’s here, and that is more than she ever expected to get.

“Slade?” His name comes out in a gasp as she straightens up, hands wiping away the tears on her cheeks as he stalks over to her.

“Come on,” he doesn’t even stop as he marches past her, his eyes narrowed in fury and focused ahead. “We’re going to make Ivo pay for what he’s done.”

Her eyes go wide when he suggests that, and a part of her spends a few seconds seriously considering the idea. But the two of them, even if they do succeed in killing Ivo, can’t take out all of his men on their own. Not to mention that Butcher won’t hesitate to slit Leonard’s throat the second Ivo is out of the way.

“Wait!” She finds the word exploding from her mouth in a panic, her legs quickly propelling her body around and after Slade. She gets in front of him, fast enough to halt him. “Ivo… Ivo contacted me and Oliver last night.”

“What?” He asks, his voice a low and near deadly growl.

“He said Leonard is still alive, he’ll hand him over if we give him the Mirakuru.” She hurriedly explains, tears once again streaming down her face. “Please. Please, I know you want your revenge. I don’t blame you. But I can’t lose Leonard, Slade, I can’t. And if you kill Ivo his men will kill Leonard.” She explains and before she even realizes what she’s doing she’s surged forward and pressed her head firm into this very large, very unhinged, man’s bulletproof vest protected chest; her fists curling tightly around the shoulder straps keeping that vest secured as she sobs. “Please Slade, please don’t let what happened to Shado happen to him, please.”

She goes off in an endless string of “please” and “I’m sorry”, begging for Slade to give her a chance. He’s her last hope at saving Leonard, and the thought that he is likely to deny her just has her relinquishing any and all control she’s managed to maintain over her recent fears.

Eventually she feels his strong hands, hesitant, slow, and awkward as they may be, coming around to hold her. He settles one on her back, holding her firm but not too tight against him, while the other tangles in her hair.

“Ok, “ he promises her in a whisper so soft she’s almost certain she’s imagined the word. “Ok.”

 

* * *

 

Of course, nothing is ever that easy.

Once getting Slade on board with the idea of handing over the Mirakuru Sara knows that the real challenge is going to be keeping him on board until sundown. He brings her to where he’d stashed the serum, back at the sub of all places, and then instructs her to carry it because he doesn’t trust himself with it. She’s fine with that, and when they stop to rest at the top of a hill, from where they can see the beach; she hides the crate in a bush so that he won’t look at it. He spends the afternoon pacing in circles whilst she uses his binoculars to keep eyes on the boat, on lookout for any sign of Leonard. Her heart is practically frozen in her chest the entire time, because she isn’t seeing any evidence of him. But, she keeps telling herself, he was practically blown up; he won’t exactly be sauntering around the deck in his typical Snart fashion.

“This plan is horrible!” Slade snarls yet again, making Sara roll her eyes. “You don’t even know if your friend is really alive!”

“I am _trying_ to get that information, thank you very much.” She snaps, only briefly glancing over her shoulder at him before redirecting her attention back to the freighter so far in the distance. Ivo is keeping his distance from the beach until sundown.

Smart.

“If he’s dead,” Slade snarls, “I’m blowing that ship to kingdom come.”

She nods, that’s their deal.

It isn’t more than a few seconds later that she lets the binoculars drop with a frustrated groan. “It’s almost sundown,” she says, “We’re going to have to-”

She cuts herself off, scrambling her hands for the binoculars, because something on the ship has caught her eye. It’s two of the guards, moving slower than she might’ve expected, and they’re dragging a third person between them.

“What is it?” Slade questions as she breathes out a small smile, unable to believe what it is she’s seeing. He’s hurt, bad. His arms are bound tight behind his back and his legs are barely keeping up with the slow pace of the guards. But he’s there on that ship and he’s alive.

“Leonard.”

 

* * *

 

When the guards come down Leonard knows what’s coming, they’re here to kill him. It’s Butcher, the new Captain from what he’s heard, and a new right hand man for him. He almost wants to ask what brought about that change, but he knows he wasn’t the only one injured during the prisoner exchange, and his injuries were far from the most severe. He knows that he is a dead man regardless, but self-preservation is a skill long ingrained in him and it is insistent he keeps his mouth shut as so not to make things worse on himself.

As if things could get worse.

Butcher unlocks the shackles keeping his arms up, allowing his limbs to drop and his aching shoulders to finally release themselves. He exhales heavily with the sensation of his muscles finally feeling relief, and no sooner are Butcher and his new friend yanking him to his feet.

He has to bite back a cry as weight is forced onto his injured leg, willing all of his focus to convince the limb to move. Apparently he isn’t moving fast enough, because Butcher gives him a swift kick to the already broken shin and he goes down; a pained growl sounding out through gritted teeth.

They don’t let him hit the ground; of course, they keep him just barely suspended with rough grips under his arms.

“You did this to yourself,” Butcher growls in his ear as they yank him back up. “You were always a weak man, you only proved it by chasing after that bitch.”

Leonard knows his next move is a mistake before he makes it, but it’s worth it. Sara isn’t here to kick Butcher’s ass herself, she never will be again, but somebody has to. He locks his hands tight around the asshole’s throat and proceeds to send the two of them tumbling down the stairs. He never once let’s go, not even when the splint goes flying off his busted leg, even though he’s near certain that he hears the bone break even more at one point. For this reason he lands on top of Butcher, and soon they’re wrestling around on the prison floor. Len can hear the screams and cheers of other prisoners around them, some banging and pulling on cages, but most just shouting to encourage the fight. The metallic floor is damp with a mix of seawater and blood, most of which Len is sure is his own. A good portion of it is being kicked into his eyes when he suddenly feels more hands on him, shouting and dragging him away from Butcher.

“Break it up!” One of the other guards, Len isn’t exactly sure which one, shouts as they’re separated.

There are four more guards in here now, and two of them have him and are tying his wrists tightly together behind his back while the other two have Butcher. He looks worse for wear, and Len will allow himself to be proud of that. If he’s going out, he’s at least going out knowing he gave Butcher a taste of what he deserves.

The two guards drag him up from the prison floor and across the deck of the ship. They’re moving towards the island, and Ivo is standing over at the bow. The guards bring him over there and drop him just behind the scientist, and he grunts in pain when coming down on his leg.

Ivo doesn’t say anything at his obvious pain. He doesn’t even turn around. He just keeps staring out at the island.

Leonard knows the silence tactic all too well, though, to fall for it. Ivo wants him to demand an answer regarding Sara’s death. He wants him to curse him out and slander the name of his “noble” cause. But he won’t fall for that; Sara wouldn’t want him to, so the trip back to the island passes in total silence.

They arrive just as the sun is starting to set.

The two guards who brought him here return, one with a burlap sack, and suddenly Leonard’s gut twists. What are they doing? As the sack is placed and secured over his head he can’t help but wonder if this is Ivo’s punishment for him. If he’s going to be brought to the highest point on the island and shoved off, or if maybe they’re going to have him kneel over Sara’s dead and rotting body so that her corpse will be the last thing he ever sees. Maybe they aren’t even going to kill him outright, but maybe they have actually found the Mirakuru and are going to use him as a test subject instead. They’ll turn him into a monster like all the fabled “survivors” of the WWII experiments.

God, he really hopes now more than ever that those are fables.

He’s hauled and tossed into what he is assuming to be one of the lifeboats like a sack of potatoes. Squinting his eyes closed in pain at the harsh landing he suddenly finds himself very grateful for the burlap sack. It isn’t long before he’s dragged up by the arms again. Not long before he feels the change in terrain under his boots as he’s dragged off the boat and onto the sand of the beach, then grunts in surprise when he’s forced to his knees only a moment later.

He hisses in pain as sand seeps into the open wound that is the lower half of his left leg.

“You know,” he hears Ivo say in what he’s come to dub as the scientist’s “negotiating voice.” His tone is full of false concern and casualness “He really should see a doctor, his leg is pretty bad.”

“Remove the bag,” A low, dangerous, and foreign voice orders from quite a ways away. “Show us it’s really him.”

Despite all the pain and, frankly, confusion, that Leonard is currently experiencing he still manages to hear the smirk on Ivo’s face.

“Show me you have what I want.” He bargains and then there is the sound of rumbling, something opening over by where the strange voice had come from, and then more words from Ivo. “Very nice.”

The only warning that Len gets is the sound of Ivo’s feet taking two steps closer to him before he feels the other man’s fingers scraping the top of his scalp as he yanks the sack from his head.

It takes his eyes a few seconds to adjust, and then his mind a few seconds more to determine whether he’s dead or not. He is fairly certain Ivo only removed the sack, didn’t pull a gun and kill him or anything. But it’s hard to be sure, because there is a strange man standing a few yards across from him, and next to said man is a tiny blonde with the same wide blue eyes he’s been seeing every time he closes his own since yesterday.

“Sara.”

* * *

 

It’s him.

She’s sure that it’s him, but Slade still sticks an arm out to keep her from rushing forward when Ivo’s men force him to his knees.

“Wait kid,” He whispers to her, “We’ve got to make sure.”

She wants to snort and tell him that she is sure, that she watched them march him across the deck from their vantage point. But instead she nods. Slade still has the Mirakuru in his system, it’s a miracle he’s being patient; she isn’t going to push that.

“You know,” Ivo says almost as if he were about to bring up a point about the weather. “He really should see a doctor, his leg is pretty bad.”

Sara snarls quietly at him, wanting so badly to point out that _he_ claims to be a doctor. But Slade, thankfully, keeps both his gaze and his voice firm and steady.

“Remove the bag,” he demands, his voice dangerously calm and Sara could swear that she can actually hear the Mirakuru in it, fighting as hard as she to remain under control. “Show us it’s really him.”

“Show me you have what I want,” Ivo counters with a bargain and a smirk on his face.

Slade nods to her then and she bends down to the chest in the sand at her feet, unlocking it and revealing it’s long hunted contents. She doesn’t miss the way Ivo’s eyes brighten at the sight, nor the way Slade’s darken.

“Very nice,” Ivo practically purrs, almost giddy. He doesn’t even have to be asked after that, just walks up behind his prisoner with no prompting and tugs the burlap sack off his head in one clean motion.

The air catches in Sara’s lung when her eyes land on him; his face bloody and bruising from fresh wounds, but alive. His eyes blink open and closed a few times before landing on her, and he just stares.

He whispers something, her name she thinks, but it’s too quiet to hear. In any case Ivo’s men don’t hesitate in yanking him to his feet, pain evident on his face.

“Now then!” Ivo exclaims almost happily, like this is all nothing more than a picnic to him. “You give me the Mirakuru, I give you Mr. Snart, and we can all be on our happy trails like none of this ever happened.”

“Don’t do it!” Leonard grits out through his teeth, groaning even more afterwards when the guards decide to squeeze his arms as punishment for speaking out. “Don’t give it to him!” He continues to insist despite the obvious, not to mention worsening, pain he’s in. “Don’t- GAH!”

He’s cut off this time when one of Ivo’s men twists his wrist nearly all the way around, and Sara wants more than anything to bolt for him. But she can’t, not yet; they’re still playing on Ivo’s terms.

“Mr. Snart I know you’re no expert in keeping your nose where it belongs, that’s what landed you in this mess, but give it a try. Just this once.” The ringleader in question instructs, turning his attention back to what he’s come for before Leonard can even try giving a response. “Now,” he begins seriously, “Do we have a deal?”

Slade looks over at her and Sara exchanges a look with him, then he turns back to Ivo.

“Take it.” He says, his voice still low and maybe even more dangerous, but Sara isn’t about to look a gift hoarse in the mouth. She closes up the chest and hefts it into her arms, bringing it over to Ivo and dropping it at his feet.

He grins at her, his lips curling in the corners maliciously, but he doesn’t say anything. He just takes a step back and gestures over for her to go to Leonard.

The guards drop him without hesitation, of course, but she’s already there and he crumbles into her arms.

“Leonard,” she murmurs to him, tears in her eyes as she tries to help him remain steady without putting too much weight on his broken leg. He’s solid and real under her touch, leaning into her as much as he can just to remain upright. “It’s ok, it’s ok. I’ve got you.” She promises, one hand going almost magnetically to his face so that she can get a good look at him.

He winces when she touches him, her fingers brushing against the yellowing mark of a forming bruise.

Then, of course, everything goes to hell.

 

* * *

 

Sara is holding him.

Sara is alive and kneeling before him, keeping him upright and as off of his bad leg as she can.

“Leonard,” her voice is soft, almost surprised, and there’s a moisture in her eyes that he hasn’t seen in a long time. “It’s ok, it’s ok. I’ve got you.” She assures him, her hand coming up to brush against his jawline right where Butcher nailed him with a punch.

He hopes she doesn’t catch his grimace at the contact of her skin; not that he doesn’t relish it. He knows this can’t last, knows that he has to tell her to take the Mirakuru before Ivo can pick it up. She needs to destroy it, even if it means Ivo will destroy him. Still, he can have two seconds of this, right? Two seconds of being held by the woman whom he’s fallen for over the past year? Two seconds of her tender hand on his cheek? Two seconds to tell her everything he wishes he could’ve said earlier? He can have that much, right?

Apparently not.

Before he has a chance to do anything with those two seconds a flaming arrow comes soaring out from the trees and embeds itself in Ivo’s precious box before the madman even has a chance to grab it, and the contents aren’t exactly fire friendly. The chest goes up in a ball of flames, getting everybody’s attention, and then Oliver Queen comes out from the trees.

Of all reactions to have at the treasure he has been searching years for being destroyed, Ivo surprisingly settles for putting his hands on his hips and sighing.

“You were so close Oliver,” he mutters, “So close,” now his voice is beginning to rise. “All you had to do was give me the Mirakuru and-”

“And what?” Queen interrupts, “You’d turn your prisoners into monsters like you?”

“No,” Ivo responds with an exasperated sigh, “Your friend here would never have to know it was you who killed Shado.”

Silence.

There is nothing but silence, and then, finally, the stunned voice of the large man Sara had been standing with.

“What?”

He looks over at Oliver; who looks broken to Leonard, broken and guilty.

“Slade,” Oliver practically whispers and the man, Slade, who is built like a tank, approaches him.

“Is it true?” He demands of the younger man, who doesn’t answer. “IS. IT. TRUE???” He roars in Oliver’s face and Len feels Sara’s hands tense against him, either clinging to him for safety or getting ready to attempt moving him, he isn’t sure which, but he knows neither is going to work.

“Tell him Oliver!” Ivo shouts, apparently wanting to speed this along. “Tell him I gave you a choice. Sara or Shado, you could’ve saved her if you wanted to!” He’s still talking, still shouting, but Leonard has stopped listening. His eyes have flown to Sara, who is suddenly very preoccupied with cutting through the rope binding his wrists together.

Oliver chose her.

Oliver had a choice, and he chose her.

Involuntarily he finds himself wondering what she would’ve done in that position, if Ivo had put himself and Oliver before her and forced her to choose. Who would she have-?

“Sara!”

The shout of her name erupts from his mouth the second his hands are free, and thank god they are. He tackles her to the ground in what he hopes is enough time, because Slade is now pissed and he’s pointed his gun to “correct” Oliver’s choice.

Chaos is erupting all around them, men fighting and not standing a chance against Slade. He has to have the Mirakuru in his system, no possible way he doesn’t. But they have even more problems than him, as more men whom Len recognizes from the prison floor flood the beach he realizes that they must have rebelled against the few guards who remained on the ship during this exchange; although why they swam all the way over here instead of just taking the ship he has no idea.

“Leonard,” Sara’s whisper of his name, is first name, the second time she’s said it, brings him back to reality; a horrible reality he had hoped he wouldn’t find himself in.

He wasn’t fast enough.

He was fast enough to stop Slade from killing her with his shot, but the bullet’s still made it’s mark; only instead of being buried in her skull or her chest it’s quickly spreading a large stain of blood across her abdomen.

He only allows himself a brief split second for panic, and then he gathers her into his arms and tries to get up with her.

“GAH!” He shouts out as the knee of his still functional leg goes buckling, and he is fairly certain the broken tibia of his other leg juts out even more.

The two of them land in a heap on the ground, Sara groaning with the harsh landing. He utters a curse; he can’t pull a stunt like that, not when she has a goddamn bullet lodged inside her. He knows what he has to do, if he can’t move her, so he looks around for someone who won’t kill her.

The answer to his prayers, no pun intended, comes in the sight of one of the prisoners making a run for it.

“Flynn!” He shouts, getting the attention of the Reverend whom they picked up in Maliku not long before finding Sara.

The man isn’t much of a fighter and frankly bears a resemblance to the rat that likes to hang around in his cell and be petted. But he just might be the only person on this beach besides Leonard himself who doesn’t want Sara dead.

He runs over without saying a word, just sort of looks at the scenario before him, like he’s trying to gauge whether he was called over because he can offer some actual assistance or if it’s because he is authorized to read last rights.

“Take her!” Len shouts, passing Sara into the Minister’s arms, and the other man scrambles to comply. “Get her away from here!”

But, of course, Sara isn’t going to go easy.

“No!” She tries to protest with a sudden surge of energy, “No-”

“She’s conscious enough to tell you where to go,” Len cuts her off, “Go!”

With that Flynn takes off running, Sara struggling and screaming all the way, but they disappear into the trees. As for Leonard, well, a lot of people are dying all around him, and if this is where his time is destined to run out then at least he got to hold Sara one last time.


	6. Alliance

Sara keeps on sobbing as Leonard fades from her view, one hand remaining pressed firmly against the wound in her side whilst the other holds a tight grip on the back of Flynn’s shirt. He doesn’t know where he’s going; she knows that. She also knows that the plane is going to be their best bet, and loathed as she is to admit it she knows that saving Leonard isn’t an option for her anymore. But, hopefully, it will be again if she manages to survive this.

“Go right,” she chokes out and she could swear the Flynn nearly jumps with the surprise of her speaking.

“What?”

“Right!” She practically barks and thankfully he makes the turn.

Getting back to the plane isn’t an easy task, not when she’s relying on memory to get them there and Flynn is nervous, but they make it with a few of the other escaped prisoners having caught up alongside them. It’s all a blur to Sara by the time they get there. She’s alert enough to be able to help Flynn out as he lays her onto the ground, as well as to see the fear in his eyes darting around the area.

“There’s a med kit somewhere,” she promises before she suddenly begins coughing, “Not sure where.” He nods at that, and when he rushes off to check for the med kid she lets her head loll back against the dirty metal of the floor. Her eyes squeeze tight as she’s finally focusing on nothing but the fiery pain in her abdomen, the feeling of blood oozing through her fingers almost enough to make her nauseous.

Almost.

“THE HELL?!?!?!” The furious roar is the only warning she gets before the pain suddenly intensifies ten fold as the huge weight of one of the prisoners, one whom has always held a particularly nasty opinion of her, comes crushing down on her. She tries to gasp, but she can’t, because he’s straddling her and as an added measure to ensure that she can’t breath at all his meaty hands are locked around her throat.

“What are you doing helping her?!” He demands, probably talking to Flynn, but Sara can’t be sure.

Her world is going black, and there are more scrambled shouts as the black turns to white, dot by miniscule dot. She should’ve expected this, frankly. She should’ve known that the prisoner’s she’s spent the past year torturing under Ivo’s command would never let her live.

It’s understandable that she’s surprised when air starts flooding back into her lungs.

She takes a greedy breath in, her vision and other senses clearing enough that she can see Hendrick, the prisoner previously trying to suffocate her, has been somehow knocked unconscious and hauled off her.

“Sara,” her name is the first coherent thing that she hears, and judging by the look on Flynn’s face it isn’t the first time he’s said it. Regardless, once he realizes that he’s gotten her attention his expression brightens, and then falls sheepish.

“I couldn’t find anything for the pain-”

“What about this?” The thick accent of the Russian prisoner, Bratva member Anatoly Knyazev, chimes in and Sara roles her head to the side to see him holding up a dingy glass bottle filled a little less than halfway with scotch.

Flynn looks exasperated at the sight, “I can use that to sterilize the wound but I don’t think-”

She doesn’t have time for this.

Summoning up all that she can of her strength Sara sits up and holds her hand out for the bottle, to which Anatoly thankfully complies and so she takes a healthy swig of the amber liquid.

“Huh, I knew there was something to like about this one.” She hears Anatoly observe as he snatches back the bottle.

Flynn doesn’t seem too impressed by the whole display, but she hardly cares about that. He is far too preoccupied with stealing the bottle from Anatoly so that he can use it as sterilizer, all the time muttering about how it isn’t “proper disinfectant”.

As he works Sara does her best not to let her mind wander, because if she were to allow that the only thought she would have would be that of Leonard dying at Slade’s hand. So she tries to focus on her surroundings, on Anatoly and a few of the other escaped prisoners arguing over what to do with Hendrick, and her. Some want her dead, but most sound like they don’t have any opinion. That’s good, at least.

Flynn is almost through sewing her up, another good thing, when that good is canceled out by the cackle of Ollie’s walkie-talkie.

“Sara? Are you there?” Slade’s static laced voice sends a chill down her spine and quiet’s the group of bickering men almost instantly. “Sara?”

Everyone looks at each other, all of them waiting for someone else to move, and finally Anatoly decides to be the one whose had enough. He crosses over to the crate with the walkie-talkie perched on its ledge and lifts the device to his mouth.

“She is a bit busy at the moment,” he says into the radio, “She’s taking care of the hole you put in her hip.” He almost sounds disgusted, like he actually cares, and Sara makes a mental note about that.

“Give her this message for me,” Slade’s cold voice returns. “Ivo is no longer capable of running The Amazo, so I have taken control.” The entire group of them exchange looks, “Many of the prisoners are dead, including the engineer. Unfortunately the engine was damaged during the prisoners’ escape.”

Another round of glances, including one “Wasn’t me,” from Anatoly.

“After talking with the remaining prisoners, they’ve all assured me that only one other man knows how to fix this freighter. One of them; Mr. Hendrick.” They all glance over to the man in question, who is still sitting against what’s left of the plane’s back wall slightly dazed, but otherwise seems both aware and terrified of what he’s hearing. “If he is with you, deliver him to me. If not…” They almost think he’s going to leave it there, so much so that Anatoly opens his mouth to speak, but then words replace the static once again. “I am not Ivo, Sara. I’m not going to make you choose between the man you love and an old friend. Just be aware, Sara, that Mr. Snart is not in good health after what Ivo did to him, and I can only hold my temper around Oliver for so long. There is no time limit on this, but the longer you wait to deliver Mr. Hendrick the worse things will get for both of them.”

* * *

 

The fact that he is still alive is nothing short of a miracle in Leonard’s mind, even if he is still being held as ransom. At least now he knows Sara’s alive, even if he didn’t get to hear her, he’s reasonably confident that Anatoly is in fact with her and if they found a radio they must have found a first aid kit.

But, it isn’t all relief. His leg is still broken and he’s still chained on his knees, though now he’s in what use to be Ivo’s quarters, though Slade seems to have claimed the room as his own. Oliver is here too; chained by his wrists to the ceiling.

“Well,” Slade says almost solemnly as he rises from the desk chair and turns to face the two of them. “You had better hope she comes.”

“Don’t you hurt her,” Oliver’s voice is weak with the torture that Slade and his newfound friends, AKA guards and prisoners who survived yesterday’s riot, have already inflicted on him. But he’s still trying, Leonard will give him that; even if he knows the other man would be much better off keeping his mouth shut for right now.

Slade stalks over to him at a threateningly slow pace, one that has Len’s heart pounding in his chest. He hasn’t seen a look of hatred that pure in a long time, if ever. He hasn’t felt fear like this since he was a child cowering before his old man. He feels his face going pale as he suddenly realizes that this hellhole has never been more dangerous than it is right now, and he’s smack in the middle of the fire.

“That’ll be up to her,” Slade growls in Oliver’s face, “Worry about yourself.”

With that he turns, like he’s going to leave, but then he stops. He stands perfectly still as he contemplates his next move, to leave Oliver be or to kill him right now, his jaw ticking with the decision. It’s no surprise to Leonard that he turns back around, but the direct punch to the jaw that Oliver receives almost makes him wince.

Satisfied with himself, for now, Slade turns once again and this time he and his new minions take their leave, though Len is sure two of the guards remain posted outside the door.

Oliver’s coughing is the only sound that disrupts the heavy silence left in their wake, blood dribbling down his chin.

“Do you think-” another cough, accompanied by some more blood. “Do you think Sara and Hendrick will come?”

“Hendrick?” Len considers the odds of him coming, “Doubt it. Sara? I think we both know the answer to that question.”

Oliver gives a resigned sigh, one very much like what Leonard feels like letting out right about now, and suddenly it becomes apparent how awkward this is. Oliver is the man Sara was crawling into bed with before she came here, the man who evidently chose to save her over his other friend when faced with the choice. Not to mention that, while he clearly hadn’t thought the plan through, he did grab her during his group’s first “negotiation” with Ivo, he tried to get her away from him.

That’s more than Leonard can say he’s done.

“You don’t want her to come?”

The voice of the younger man is still weak from the pain he’s endured over the past hour, but it jars Len from his thoughts all the same.

“No,” He drawls, “And I’m assuming you don’t either?” His voice is weary, like a part of him is actually hoping Oliver will say he _does_ want her to come, even though he would pull himself to his feet and give Oliver another punch to the face for that answer.

But, as expected, the younger man shakes his head.

“She’s stubborn,” he admits, “She’s made it clear that she’s not leaving this island without you.”

Leonard wishes he were surprised by that, he truly does, but he isn’t; at least, not by the part that he should be.

“You have a way to leave the island?”

Oliver sighs, the kind of sigh that says he hadn’t meant that literally.

“No,” he says, but there’s a hint of something on his face, not quite a lie but… something. It’s a look Leonard has worn himself plenty of times throughout his life, the look of a half formed plan he isn’t ready to speak aloud. “What I mean is she cares about you, enough that she’s willing to do anything to get you back.”

There’s a bite in his tone, an anger settled over his words; but Leonard only nods.

“Well, if you _do_ find a way to get off this island I want you to do me a favor.” He requests and Oliver turns his head to look down at him. “Make sure she goes.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m not setting foot back on that ship. Not for anything, not for anybody, and certainly not for your boyfriend!” Hendrick shouts to the group, though the accusing finger he points is directed right into Sara’s face where she’s still seated on the ground. Ever since Slade went silent on them they’ve been talking in circles; first as a whole group of escapees and now it’s down to five of them. Sara herself, then Hendrick, of course. With the occasional chime in from Flynn, Anatoly, and another prisoner by the name of Peter.

“Or should I say boyfriends?” Hendrick continues, “Because not only were you screwing Snart, but soon as he showed up you ditched him and ran off with Tarzan.”

“It’s not like that Hendrick, at all.” She tries to tell him but he’s still bent down and sneering in her face.

“You sure?” He demands, “Cause I remember the day they dragged you down to the floor. Wearing nothing but your underwear, crying like a baby, blubbering about how someone would pay anything to get you back. Then Snart and Ivo threw you a bone so you tortured us all without remorse. You’re a worm, Sara. A spineless little thing that doesn’t give a damn about anyone other than herself!”  
“Hendrick!” Anatoly snaps and Sara wants to curse the tears clouding her eyes, as well as Anatoly for stepping in, because it isn’t helping her case any.

“What?” Hendrick demands, rounding on the other man, and this time it’s Peter who steps forward.  
“That’s enough man,” he says, “We were all prisoners on that ship, Sara was just doing what she had to in order to survive.”

“Yeah no shit,” Hendrick agrees, “And she didn’t give a rat’s ass who got hurt!” He practically roars, and then it’s quiet, but only for a few seconds. “Ivo asked me, once, if I would help him. I told him I wouldn’t hurt innocent people.”

“And you had that choice.” The words are the first she’s spoken since Hendrick started spiraling, and truthfully she knows she is probably better off not indulging in this fight, but if they’re ever going to have even a chance at a civil discussion about this they’re going to need to understand each other. So, with a wince and ignoring the offered hand from Flynn, Sara rises to her feet.

“Look at yourself,” she says, gesturing to him with the hand that isn’t still pressed against her side. “You’re like six foot five, you’re built like a tank. I didn’t want to hurt anyone either, but I wouldn’t have survived a day on that prison floor.” He seems to be considering her words, but she knows he isn’t convinced, not yet. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, Hendrick.” She continues, “Ok, but unless you can look me in the eye and tell me that not a single person on that floor would’ve tormented me, that not a single guard would have raped me that day, or any day after, then I stand by what I’ve done. I didn’t want to do it, I hate that I did it, but I had no other choice; not really.”

Hendrick is quiet; in fact, everyone is quiet. They’re all staring at her, and now that she pauses to breathe she realizes that a few tears have escaped her eyes and stained her cheeks. Her heart starts to pick up it’s pace, she isn’t supposed to cry in front of them. Or… she wasn’t. They aren’t on the Amazo anymore, things are changing, and suddenly it all washes over her that if she wants to save Leonard and Oliver she is going to need to take charge of things right here and now. Not as a guard, not as Ivo’s pet, and not even as someone better, tougher, than any of them. She is one of them now, and this is suddenly about a whole lot more than just trying to stay alive.

She wipes the tears away with the back of her hand and takes a deep breath in through her nose to steady herself, a plan forming in her mind.

“If what Slade says is true then that means Ivo is dead, or at least dying, meaning that boat is no longer a prison.”

“Sure it is,” Anatoly interrupts her with a scoff, “Just has new warden.”

“A new warden who can barely see straight thanks to the Mirakuru he has in his system.” She corrects before turning her attention back onto Hendrick. “Prisoners or guards Ivo kept us all trapped on that ship, but he’s gone. Slade has the Mirakuru but even he isn’t invincible. With all of us together, if we play it smart, we can take him out; and if you fix the ship we can all go home.”

Home is not a word that should be used lightly around this group, if ever, but they have a shot at it. For the first time there is a chance that this nightmare could be over for all of them, but only if they can come to an agreement.

“You’re crazy,” Hendrick finally sneers at her, and he turns to walk out of the plane, but then Peter opens his mouth.

“Maybe,” he says, “But she does have a point. With Ivo out of the way and Slade mentally unstable we might have a shot at taking the freighter, but we’ll need to act fast while the crew is disorganized.”

All eyes fly from him and back to Hendrick, as if in silent agreement and waiting for his verdict, and eventually he groans.

“Alright,” he gives in, “Who has a plan?”


	7. The Final Countdown

“This is a terrible plan,” Hendrick complains, for not the first time, as Sara tightens the ropes around his arms.

“So was plan to follow friendly scientist onto freighter,” Anatoly mocks as she finishes, “You were expecting good plan?”

The two of them are still bickering as Sara walks across the ‘room’ and picks up a steel rod. She nearly jumps when she turns back around to see Peter standing right there, concern written all over his face.

“What are you doing?”

She sighs, Peter has always been a rational and sweet person; he followed Ivo onto the ship because the bastard promised a miracle cure to his cancer. It’s a pity, really, because doctors didn’t give him long to live but with what he’s survived on The Amazo, even before Ivo’s psychotic radiation experiments, there’s probably a good chance those doctors were wrong about him.

Sara knows he won’t understand; he’s one of those people who is too pure for his own good.

“Slade will never believe he went willingly.” She says before marching past him and back over to the still arguing Hendrick and Anatoly.

She inhales deeply as she draws the pipe back, and when Hendrick sees her she doesn’t give him time to react before swinging hard as she can into his skull. He falls to the ground unconscious, and even as she gets to her knees in front of him she can feel Anatoly’s wide eyes locked on her.

“What did you do that for?” He demands, incredulous.

“Relax,” she orders, her fingers finding a pulse. “I just knocked him out, it’ll make it more believable.”

Anatoly shrugs, “Could’ve told me,” he more grumbles than anything, “Maybe I wanted to hit him.”

Sara rolls her eyes at his words and reaches out for the walkie-talkie. It’s time to contact Slade, but she still looks around that the group of the remaining escapes as if for confirmation that they still want to do this.

They’re all watching her, none of them saying a word, so she raises the small radio to her mouth and presses the button.

“Slade,” she beckons, her voice shaking nearly as much as her hand. “We’ll meet you on the beach.”

* * *

 

When Sara’s voice cackles over the static of Slade’s radio Oliver barely even notices. He can still feel the fresh stinging on his back where Slade clasped a rough hand over the surface of his newly acquired tattoo, and that combined with the numbness from all the electric shocks it’s a miracle he’s recognized her voice at all.

“We’ll meet you on the beach.”

If there were any moisture left in his mouth he would swallow. Slade walks over to the radio slowly, as if he’s entertaining the idea of tossing it off the ship, which he very well could be. He’s holding his breath, waiting for Slade to do something, and he dares a glance down at Leonard to find the other man stiff as himself. The tension is so thick, so high, that it’s almost a relief when Slade turns to look his way.

“Well…” He drawls in the low, gravelly, tone that he’s become so fond of lately. He approaches then, deliberately slow until he’s standing barely an inch away. “It seems Sara and Mr. Hendrick have come to an agreement.” With that Slade leans into his personal space even more, just a breath away. “For your sake, I hope it’s the right one.”

With that said Slade reaches up and seizes his handcuffs, ripping them clean off the pipe on the ceiling. He collapses to the metal ground with a hard “oof” but if anything Slade takes pleasure in it. He’s hauled to his, barely stable, feet by two guards. He can feel Leonard’s eyes on him the entire time. He’s waiting for the other man to be hauled up as well, which earns him and hard kick to the back of one knee by one of the guards. He groans through clenched teeth as he falls, the guards just barely keeping him up. When he finally does regain some semblance of stability they continue leading him out, so that all he can do is listen for the sound of Leonard being moved.

He listens, and listens, and listens all the way across the deck until he’s shoved down the docking ramp and he nearly splashes again into the water.

Leonard _should_ splash into the water with his leg.

He should, but he doesn’t, because he’s never brought out.

 

* * *

 

The sun is high in the midday sky as their group makes it’s way to the sandy terrain of the beach, and subconsciously Sara notes that she hasn’t slept in any capacity in at least forty-eight hours. She also notes that she doesn’t care; she can sleep when this is over.

If all goes as planned, she can sleep at home, with Leonard, in her bed.

Well, maybe _that’s_ a bit of a fantasy, since her bed is located in her parents house and her dad at least would never allow it. Not that that’s ever stopped her before but after everything she’s endured over the past year, even just the past week, she doubts she’ll have the energy for something so trivial as lying to her parents.

“You look troubled,” the thickly accented voice of Anatoly cuts through her daydream like a splash of ice cold water, so much so that Sara finds herself shaking her head to fully snap out if it.

“I’m fine,” she insists, but of course Anatoly scoffs, not believing her for a second.

“I’m glad,” he says, the sarcasm a warning that there is more to come. “I haven’t seen someone who was ‘fine’ since leaving Russia.”

She smiles just a little bit at that, laughing at her own stupidity.

“Just thinking,” she promises.

“That can be very dangerous activity,” He warns her, “Especially if thoughts are pleasant.”

She nods, and much as she hates to admit it there would be a whole mess of problems in the real world, other than her parents, that would make things difficult for her and Leonard to be together. Their age difference is one, fairly obvious, thing. But then there’s his sister, his best friend, the fact that they both had very separate lives before any of this. The fact that, even if she’s sure that he feels for her the way she does for him, they’ve never actually talked about their feelings. How-

“You are doing it again,” Anatoly warns her, enjoyment very clear in his voice.

Sara smirks, and groans, but doesn’t say anything and that Anatoly decides, apparently, is unacceptable.

“I believe the saying is, a penny for your thoughts?”

To that she chuckles, trying to find a place to even begin with this.

“It’s just so crazy,” she finally decides on, “A year ago I was cramming for finals and sneaking out my window for parties.”

“Hmm, and now you are stuck on prison island, after spending year on prison ship.” Anatoly muses, “Almost makes college tests seem insignificant.”

Sara laughs, and she wants to tell him that the college tests always seemed insignificant to her. True, she didn’t stay long enough to actually take one, but the high school ones were always pointless to her and she never imagined college would be any different. Looking back now she’d take a hundred tests and study a month straight so she could ace each one if it meant she never had to set foot on that freighter again. But she can’t say any of that, because they’ve made it to the beach, for the second or maybe even third attempt at an exchange in the past week. Slade is standing there, surrounded by guards and Ollie kneeling in a bloody mess at his feet.

But not Leonard.

“Where is he?” She demands, rage already flooding her veins as she starts to think about where Leonard could be if not here, and what Slade could have done to him.

“He’s alive.” Slade answers, but doesn’t give her any more than that. She wouldn’t expect him to, frankly she’s surprised he gave her that much. But, regardless, it isn’t enough.

“Where?” She demands through gritted teeth, and of course Slade doesn’t answer her. “You said you weren’t going to make me choose.”

“I’m not,” he swears, but he raises his gun. “I’m choosing.”

Everything that comes next happens in slow motion.

He points his gun toward Oliver, a scream of protest tears from her throat, and then a shot is fired.

But Ollie is still alive.

Sara is shaking as she processes that fact, and she can see Ollie doing the same. Slade’s gun is still pointed at his temple, but it’s gone lax in the madman’s hand. That’s about when Sara realizes that he wasn’t the one who fired, someone else here has a gun, and when she turns her head to look to her left she sees Reverend Thomas Flynn pointing a hand gun at the literal human weapon they had come here to negotiate with.

Speaking of which, Slade looks absolutely stunned. His eyes are wide, the fingers free hand clumsily brushing over the fresh hole that has just been added to his chest, directly above his heart. It almost seems too easy, but the proof is standing right in front of her, right? A direct shot to the heart, nobody should survive that, Mirakuru or not.

Apparently, Ollie has the same idea.

Sara is snapped from her daze when she sees him disarm Slade by twisting his arm backwards, the older man howling in pain before he starts fighting back. She wants to run, but suddenly she’s aware that the guards Slade brought with him are already on her and the other prisoners. The sound of gunshots echo from every direction, and it’s impossible to tell which side is shooting. Both, probably, but Slade’s men are far better equipped and Ollie can’t take him on alone. He can’t, he-

It all stops. The fighting, the screaming, and the shooting. It all stops at once, and the world around Sara goes dark.

* * *

 

Her head is pounding when she wakes up, the dim light hurting her eyes when she tries to open them. The only good thought to cross her mind is that there is no searing pain of a bullet hole, far as she can tell, so she probably hasn’t been shot again.

“Sara?”

Her eyes snap open, and then close again with a pained groan. That was a mistake, she thinks, but she needs to look. It was his voice, Leonard, calling for her.

“Sara?” It’s his voice again, she isn’t dreaming, and she’s fairly certain that she isn’t dead.

She makes sure to take it slow this time as she lets her eyes open, trying to keep her gaze as far from the light as possible. She’s in a cage, on the prison floor of the Amazo. There are no chains on her, just bars all around. On the other side of those bars, unchained in a cage of his own, Leonard is watching her.

“Sara? Are you alright?” There is concern lined into the features of his face, but she sees some of it ebb away as she pulls herself to sit.

“I think so,” she answers through a wince, “You?”

He shrugs, “Ok as I can be.”

She nods; even without looking she knows that his leg must still be a mess.

“Where are the others?” She asks, crawling her way over to the bars that separate them because she isn’t all that confident in her ability to stand at the moment.

“I’m not sure,” he answers, face still showing worry. “You’re the only one they brought down here.” He’s keeping his voice low, even though there are no visible guards, you never know which of the remaining prisoners could be on Slade’s payroll. “I think Hendrick’s alive, I could hear him cursing awhile ago, probably in the engine room.”

She nods, her mind playing back the chaos that happened on the beach, trying to place what happened to Hendrick. But she can’t, not for him or anyone; she was knocked out too early.

Still, there are some things she can guess.

“Ollie didn’t come back.” It isn’t a question, not when she knows that there is no chance in hell a pissed off Slade allowed the man he blames for Shado’s death to live.

“I haven’t seen his body, or heard anything.” Leonard tries to reassure her but a tear is already slipping down her cheek, and she wants to tell him that what he’s seen or heard doesn’t matter in this case; the answer is too obvious. But the words get caught in her throat, turned into a choked cry, and the next thing she knows he’s gripping the bars of the cells as though he’s trying to faze his body through them. “I’m sorry Sara.”

She nods, sniffling and wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “Yeah,” is all she can bring herself to murmur. Her eyes fall just slightly past him, to the view of the leg that he is trying to keep weight off of without toppling over, and she gasps.

“Oh my god.”

His face falls, and he looks back, as if to confirm that she’s seen what he knows she has.

The skin around his injured leg, bone still jutting out at a jagged and awkward angle, is laced with splotchy black patterns made visible by the torn fabric of his pants. At first she thinks that her eyes have to be playing tricks on her, that the dark, vine-like patterns might be nothing more than dried blood from the wound. But no, the look of resignation on his face is more confirmation than she wants.

“This isn’t exactly a sanitary ship, Sara.” His words are too much, and she’s already shaking her head with even more tears clouding her vision. “The beach wasn’t much better.”

“You need a doctor,” she blurts through the new lump that has formed in her throat.

“Not an option,” he sighs, “You and I have both seen a man or two pick up gangrene from Ivo’s work.”

“No,” she is still shaking her head like a child, tears sliding unapologetically down her cheeks.

“There’s nothing all the way out here that can help me now. Nothing except a gun.”

That does it.

“No,” she blubbers, her hands moving to cover his as best they can around the bars. “No, no we can… we can…”

“We can’t, Sara.” He tells her sternly, and if she weren’t crying so much she might have noticed the tears shining in his own eyes. “We could cut off my leg, but out here that wouldn’t do anything except buy me a couple extra days to suffer.”

“No,” she’s sure her face his red by now as the sobs start to send tremors through her entire body; she’d collapse if it weren’t for his fingers having curled around to the backs of her hands. She can’t fall to the ground, can’t put those inches between them, she needs to stay close as she can. She needs to get closer.

As a deep, wailing sob finally tears it’s way from her throat Sara lets the momentum of it drag her forward until her head is firm against the cool metal of the bars. She cries like that for too long, Leonard whispering words to her that don’t hold any meaning, not really. The only thing of any comfort at all is the feeling of his fingers rubbing back and fourth on her knuckles, on the surface of her hands, anywhere he can reach.

She can tell he’s worried when she starts to hyperventilate, can hear it in his voice, but she needs to calm down. He can’t die, he can’t, and he needs to know that he doesn’t have to.

“….’Ming,” she, very pathetically, manages to choke out.

“What?” He asks and she takes a few more shuttering breaths, willing herself to speak.

“The-the-they-they’re-they’re-co-co-coming.” She sobs and when Leonard doesn’t say anything she chances a look up, only to find that he looks completely confused. “We had a plan,” she croaks, her voice weak from crying, which is probably for the best considering talking too loudly could prove dangerous. “To take the freighter. If…” another shutter left from the tears, “If anyone survived, they’re coming.” The thought actually brings a delirious smile to her face, the feeling of hope exploding in her chest because the stakes are different now. She can’t crush that hope anymore, not when doing so would mean preparing herself to lose Leonard again. “We’ll bring you to a doctor.”

For a second he just looks at her, like he’s trying to decide if he believes her or not, like he’s trying to determine how much he will dare to hope.

“Even if they come, even if you win, I might not last all the way to a port.”

She nods, and she wants to tell him that he will last that long. But it isn’t practical, and if nothing else Leonard Snart is a practical man.

So Sara, for maybe the first time in her life, makes the only practical decision she can at the moment. She straightens herself up and gently pulls her hands out from under his. She brings them up higher, just enough so that when she squeezes her fingers through to his side she can just barely frame his face, urging him closer, and then she presses her lips to his.


	8. Time After Time

She can’t deepen the kiss, which really sucks because that is all she wants to do. She’s waited so long to know the taste of Leonard’s lips that she wants to get as much of it as she can. He’s kissing her back, as best as he can from the other side of the bars, and when they’re finally forced to part for some air they don’t go far, their heads pressing together.

“You’re gonna make it,” she promises him, voice low so that only he can hear. “I promise.”

He wants to argue, she can see it in his eyes, but he never does. Instead he nods and presses another light kiss to her lips.

“Ok,” he whispers, and Sara is sure that it’s only to humor her, but she smiles just the same. They’re going to get out of this; they’re going to survive.

“Ok.”

 

* * *

 

Much as Sara wants to remain hopeful, for both her own sake and Leonard’s, she doesn’t know who survived Slade’s attack on the beach. She doesn’t know who is still out there, or if they will even keep her and Leonard alive. She doesn’t know if Hendrick will stick to the plan or if he’ll be stupid enough to try taking Slade out himself. All she knows is that she’s lying on her side as she attempts to sleep that night, facing away from her cell door, when she hears metal breaking.

Rolling over she isn’t sure what to expect, but she can feel the smile wide on her face when she sees Oliver Queen busting the lock.

“Ollie!” She exclaims quietly, springing to her feet and rushing him for a hug the moment her door is open. “Oh thank god! Ollie!” She keeps whispering, his hands firm and protective against her, wordlessly telling her that he had feared the same fate for her as she had for him.

“The sub is right alongside the freighter,” he says as they part and he moves for Leonard’s cage, making quick work of breaking the rusted lock. “You just need to swim, ok?” He asks, but his face falls, and so does hers, because they can both see the problem here.

“He can’t,” she says, not liking the look that the injured man in question is giving her.

“Correct,” he agrees, “But you can.”

She shakes her head immediately, “No,” she says, arms folding over her chest.

“Sara-”

“We’re not having this discussion.” She cuts him off, voice filled with conviction. She turns to face Ollie before Leonard can ever try to argue, and she knows he will. “Is anyone in the sub?”

“Just Anatoly,” Ollie answers but she’ll take that, it’s all they need.

“Are you coming with us?” She wishes she didn’t have to ask, but the look in his eyes tells her that he has more of a mission planned than just getting the two of them and getting out.

Sure enough, his frown answers before he even says anything.

“We found Ivo on the island,” He admits and, ok, she had guessed he had some ulterior motive here, but she never would’ve gotten that.

“What?”

“He said there’s a cure for the Mirakuru in his office,”

“Ollie,” Her voice has quickly changed from commanding to pleading, “You can’t trust him.”

“He’s dead.” Ollie supplies immediately, and while the news isn’t completely a surprise Sara still finds it sending a shockwave through her system, and when she glances back to Leonard he seems to share the sentiment.

“Slade cut off his hand,” Ollie continues to explain, “We found him in the woods, dying from gangrene.” Her stomach flips, and this time she can’t look at Leonard, not unless she wants to be sick. “He told us about the cure and that it can help Slade, told us he’d give up the location in exchange for a quick death.”

Her gaze snaps to Ollie’s with those words, and she sees the pain there. He killed him.

It wasn’t for nothing, at least. She knows the cure is real, she helped him to create it, but never did she truly believe they would actually need it.

“His office is on the second level,” she supplies, “All the way at the end of the hall. If Slade hasn’t found it, the cure should be locked in a box at the far end of his work station.” She pauses, thinking over her next words, trying to determine the type of reaction she’s going to get. “When you get there, use the radio to tell Anatoly to surface as much as he can, Leonard won’t make it far in the water.”

“You won’t make it far at all dragging me!” The injured man in question all but snarls from behind her, and she turns around to snap that it isn’t up to him, but Ollie beats her to it.

“We’re not leaving you behind Leonard,” his voice leaves no room for discussion. “I’ve told Anatoly to take down the freighter if all three of us aren’t back on the sub in an hour, we are not leaving you here to die.”

Sara thinks that Len wants to say the two of them can tell Anatoly not to shoot, it’s what she wants to say, but such a thing would be too hopeful. So, instead, she steps forward and wraps Ollie in a quick hug.

“Be safe,” she whispers to him.

“You too.”

Smiling, she pulls back, hands moving to his shoulders.

“We’re going home.” She tells him, and he nods, and then turns to go hunt for the cure.

The look on Leonard’s face when she turns back around makes her sigh, because if he could kill her with a look alone then neither of them would be getting off this ship.

“Come on,” she says, stepping forward into his cell.

“This is a bad idea,” he’s nearly snarling at her, and she is going to choose to believe that it’s from the pain in his leg, probably not a bad bet considering how much he’s sweating.

“Leonard come on,” she whines, leaning down for his arm, but stubborn as ever he yanks it away. “Leonard-”

“If you go now, you can still stop him and get away!” It’s definitely the pain, at least partly, that has him seething through his teeth at her. So she chooses to ignore it again, still reaching for his arm and this time latching onto the sleeve of his disheveled jacket.

“I told you already,” she grits through her own teeth as she yanks him up, the act not made any easier by his unwillingness. “This is not something that is up for debate.”

With that he must finally get it through his head that she isn’t leaving him here to die, because he actually helps her heft his weight up.

He groans as he starts to lean on her, trying to keep as much weight as he can on his left foot and limp alongside her. He’s heavy against her tiny frame, she’s willing to admit that, but she won’t leave him here.

They stay careful and silent as possible while moving around the ship, but there aren’t many guards around. It doesn’t take long for them to make it to the side of the ship where, just a few safe yards away, they can see the top of the sub peeking out through the surface of the water. She looks over at Len, and he looks terrified. In all the time they’ve spent together on this ship she has never seen him looking so scared.

“We’ll be ok,” her voice sounds breathless, her words almost carried off by the wind. She has a feeling that the only reason he nods is because he knows he can’t talk her out of this, and he’s right.

“On three?” Is all that he says and now it’s her chance to nod.

“One,” she starts the count.

“Two,” he picks up, now or never.

“Three.”

Before either of them can think better of it they jump over the rail of the freighter, and miraculously Leonard makes it over. Sara clings tight to him the whole way down, their fall anything but graceful. She could swear that her heart stops in her chest as they fall through the air for what seems like forever, and then splash down in the ice-cold seawater. Gasping for breath Sara does her best to fight the instinct to flail her arms in every which direction as saltwater flood her nostrils, needing to keep Leonard afloat. The two of them trying to find a rhythm, his heavier mass dependent on her, they nearly drag each other down. But some way, somehow, just as Sara starts to feel her burning lungs are about to burst, the tips of her fingers brush up against a ridged metal too rounded to be The Amazo.

Dragging themselves over the edge of the sub Sara and Leonard nearly fall down the hatch, each of them just barely managing to hold onto the ladder.

“Yeesh, you two look terrible.” Anatoly’s thick accent cuts through Sara’s spinning head.

She manages to stand up on shaky legs, her clothes stuck to her and making her every move stiff and uncomfortable. She glances down at Leonard, who is coughing up seawater, but is otherwise fine.

“I have to go back.” She announces.

“What?” Anatoly demands,

“No.” Len protests through his coughing, but Sara pays him no mind, and turns to Anatoly.

“Ollie is not going to survive against Slade on his own-”

“He instructed me to sink Amazo if the three of you are not here in one hour-”

“And you will.” She cuts him off for the final time, “Nothing’s changed, I’m not letting Ollie die.”

She waits a few seconds, but Anatoly doesn’t make any move to stop her, so she turns around where Leonard has, with great effort, pulled himself up against the wall of the sub.

He wants to stop her, it’s written all over his face. But it’s also beyond clear that he knows he can’t. In truth, she doesn’t want to go. He’s finally here with her, and they’re both safe. If she stays then she can make sure he gets to a doctor, and they can work out what happens next together. But, at the same time, she’ll never be able to live with herself if Ollie dies. She steps forward and kisses Leonard soundly, her mouth opening wide against his despite that she knows Anatoly is right behind them. She wants to remember how he tastes, how the wet stubble on the edge of his jaw feels slick under her fingers, everything about kissing him she wants ingrained in her memory. Just in case.

When she finally pulls away he’s looking at her, dark eyes half lidded, and it takes all the strength she has left to tear herself away from him.

“I’ll come back to you,” she says softly, desperately. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

Maybe the worst thing about needing to focus so much of his energy on staying on his feet is that he can’t hold onto Sara. He wants nothing more than to pull her against him, to settle his hands into her hips and never let her go. A part of him does consider letting go of the wall and grabbing on to her, because maybe that way she’ll stay here where it’s at least remotely safe. But he can’t do that to her. When she pulls away he has to force himself to open his eyes, and he wants so badly to reach out and wipe the tears from her. But he can’t, not without losing his balance.

“I’ll come back to you,” she tries to reassure him. “I promise.”

He nods, and then she’s gone. Back up the ladder and out into the freezing ocean yet again. With her gone he finally lets himself collapse to the floor, Anatoly noticing but not saying a word about it.

“That woman,” he says instead, “She is something else.”

Len wants to say something to that, but all he can bring himself to do is nod in agreement.

They’re silent as they wait for their friends to return. They wait, and they wait, and they wait. When the hour that they had promised they would wait through is up they look at each other, each daring the other to make the call.

“We wait,” Anatoly decides, he doesn’t say for how long they will keep waiting, but Leonard still nods.

They wait another ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty, and then a whole second hour has passed and this time the silence of the sub is deafening. The chances that Oliver and Sara are still alive are extremely slim, and growing slimmer with each second that passes. Anatoly checks the periscope for what feels like the billionth time, his face long when he pulls his eyes away, but this time he walks over to the controls for the torpedo.

“What are you doing?” Len demands from where he’s sprawled on the floor, trying to sit up as much as he can.

“I am sorry,” Anatoly says, “I truly am.”

Len feels like his heart is literally being ripped up in chest as Anatoly places the key in the controls. “No!” He begs; all pretense of his cold image long abandoned. “No! You’ll kill them!” He keeps screaming, tries sending his weight forward as though he can physically stop the other man, but all it does is earn him a face full of metallic floor.

So, as the hard ache of the impact settles into his jaw, he feels the sub lurch underneath him with the launch of the torpedo.

The launch of Sara and Oliver’s death.

Leonard doesn’t know Anatoly very well, and he does not like to be anything other than a hardened criminal around people whom he doesn’t know, but he lets out a sob. He screams with the burning pain of what he’s just lost. Sara. She’s gone, she promised she would come back but she lied, she’s dead. If Slade didn’t kill her then Anatoly did, and he let him. He allowed Sara to die.

So he cries, long into the night, the sounds echoing off the walls, and throughout most of it Anatoly doesn’t say a word. At some point Leonard notices the other man milling around, but he doesn’t pay him much mind. Not until his tears have slowed enough to realize that the Russian man is kneeling right next to him.

“What?” He sniffs, “What are you doing?”

“Your leg.” Anatoly replies gruffly, “You will die unless we amputate it, and then I will have tiny blonde ghost haunting my nightmares for more than her own death.”

Len wants to protest, to at the very least get angry over Anatoly referring to Sara as a ghost this soon, but he doesn’t get the chance. The other man is already tying off his injured leg and shoving a discarded piece of piping into his mouth. He gags on it, nearly spits it out, but the microscopic part of his brain that is still thinking logically keeps him from doing so.

Anatoly keeps looking around for something, and eventually comes up with a crowbar, looking very nervous. Len honestly isn’t sure which of them looks more anxious about this, but when Anatoly turns his head enough to look him in the eye, while holding that crowbar, he looks the goddamn grim reaper.

“I am sorry Leonard,” He apologizes, not helping the mental image any, and then Leonard grits his teeth down hard on the pipe as a fresh pain erupts in his leg.

 

* * *

 

By some miracle he survives Anatoly’s haphazard amputation and is still alive when they make port in Russia, if barely. He spends two months in a hospital there, being treated for the gangrene that spread through his body but somehow didn’t get to the point of killing him before they docked. Anatoly insists on taking care of it, and at first Leonard tries to refuse because he knows what Anatoly is here, and while he may be a criminal he’s never been stupid enough to allow himself to become indebted to anyone involved in any type of mob, especially not someone as high up as Anatoly.

“I launched torpedo that killed woman you loved, believe me, it is I who owes you.” The ever-insistent man says one night and so finally Len agrees to let him handle the treatment.

He thinks about those words a lot during the time that he’s in the hospital, wondering how true they are. It almost feels wrong, allowing Anatoly to believe that he loved Sara, when he isn’t so sure that he did. He’s never really experienced love. Yes, he loves Lisa and he loves Mick, he loved his mother when she was alive, but those are all very familial. Sara wasn’t like that. She started out as pity, as this shaking, tiny little thing he felt sorry for. So he convinced Ivo to give her a chance, and as punishment Ivo made her his responsibility. From there she became a problem, a liability, someone who could potentially put him in a dangerous position. But she took all his teachings to heart, and over time he watched her transform. She grew from the frightened little girl who was brought on board The Amazo into a fearless woman before his eyes. She went from being someone he was stuck with to someone he not only wanted to be around, but wanted to survive. He always wanted to see her make it home, would’ve given his life for her to be here in his place. Well, he wouldn’t want her laid up in a Russian hospital missing half of a leg, but at least she would be alive. He starts to feel sick whenever he thinks about those last few second with her on the sub, her tender lips parting from his.

_“I’ll come back to you.”_ She had said, _“I promise.”_

He wonders if she knew she was lying, and he suspects that on some level she did. He did, but he still hadn’t stopped her. Sometimes he regrets that, yet he knows that if he had she would’ve spent the rest of her life resenting him for letting Oliver die.

After weeks of lying in the hospital waiting for his infection to clear up Anatoly stops by for one of his periodical visits, and this time he has a brief case with him.

“I told you,” Len starts when he is shown the contents of the case, “I don’t want to owe you anything.”

“And I told you,” Anatoly readily rebuttals, like he rehearsed this. “It is I who owes you, so I am handling your treatment.”

Leonard still has his doubts, eyeing both Anatoly and the briefcase dubiously. “This seems to go a little beyond treatment.” He points out, to which Anatoly only shrugs.

“You want to go hopping out of Russia?”

That’s enough to convince him, and so Len remains in Russia for another few months in order to complete physical therapy with his new prosthetic. It takes time, more time than he would like, but after just a few days short of a year he’s ready to go home. He thanks Anatoly for all that he’s done, and the other man makes him swear to visit should he ever find himself back in Russia.

Returning to Central City feels bittersweet.

He’s been dreaming of this day for so long that it barely even feels real when he finally makes it. He wonders if he might feel different, happier, if he were doing this with Sara by his side, pestering him about when she gets to meet Lisa and Mick with that glowing smile illuminating her face. He’s finally accepted that he might have loved her, though he can’t be sure. He knows that had she and Oliver made it back then she would’ve been by side throughout the past year in the hospital, picking up on Russian far faster than he ever did. She would be here with him, or maybe he would have tried talking her into going to Star City instead, promising to call her after they each had a few days to settle into some form of life. The idea is almost domestic, a normal problem compared to everything they went through with Ivo. There isn’t a doubt in his mind that they would’ve spent the past few weeks trying to figure out how to make things work between them while their families are so far apart. He knows they would’ve spent the past year building something between them, something real.

If he didn’t love her then, which he is fairly certain he did, he knows he would’ve loved her by now.

Lisa nearly faints when he walks into one of their old safe houses, after she nearly shoots him of course. He knows that she has a countless number of questions, but she also knows how to be sensitive to people and has never been bad at reading him. She limits herself to three questions, spaced out over the course of the night spent sitting on the couch with a six-pack split between them. He’s grateful for her caution, allowing him to tell her everything he wants to and leave out anything that he doesn’t. He almost doesn’t mention Sara at all, because sensitive or not he knows his sister will jump all over that topic, but he finds that he wants her to. He wants her to pester him about this girl he met, knowing grin wide as the Cheshire cat’s. It’s something that she has always done, something normal. So he tells her, and at first she stays quiet, resolute about allowing him full control here. But eventually, after he details Sara’s death, she nods.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, “Still, I’m glad you had her.”

To that he smiles, because it’s a start, and he realizes that this is the first time he has actually been able to talk about Sara out loud without feeling the need to cry or throw up over it.

He spends the rest of the night telling his sister all about Sara, until he’s run out of things to say and so he inquires instead about how she’s been. She’s been fine, staying out of jail most of the time, but that can’t be said for Mick. The two of them end up staying up until the early hours of the morning planning a break out, and when they put the plan into action a few weeks later Mick looks at them like he’s seeing a ghost, his expression almost comical enough to make Len think twice about giving him payback for the screw up that landed him on that floating hell.

Almost.

Down in the basement of a safe house in Keystone Mick presses a bag of ice to his throbbing eye while Len explains the whole story of where he’s been for the past three years yet again. This time he only mentions Sara briefly, not in the mood to enter into another long night of remembering her. Still, he catches Lisa’s smirk whenever her name comes up, and he’s sure that Mick picks up on it as well.

He spends the next few years doing what he does best, organizing and pulling off heists. Some things are an adjustment with his new leg, but he makes it work.

He goes on like this for almost four years, pushing the memory of Sara further from his mind with every passing day. She would’ve wanted him to move on, to have a life after all of the shit they endured.

He tries not to think about how she probably wouldn’t have meant moving from job to job, score to score, prison to prison. Maybe they wouldn’t have worked out after all.

Anyway, he lives like this until one fateful night when he is trying to deal with a crewmember who wants out but definitely isn’t going to keep his mouth shut, and the sky lights up.

He runs, commanding everyone else in the warehouse to do the same, and the guy gets away but honestly that is just fine by him; as far as he’s concerned the guy is dead. He gets out of the city after that night, no desire to be around the aftermath of whatever the hell that was in the sky.

“What if it’s a bomb?” Mick asks through a mouthful of potato chips as the three of them are driving out of the city. “Whole place will be in chaos, we could steal whatever we want!”

“If it was a bomb we’d all be dead already.” Lisa interjects from where she’s sprawled across the backseat.

“Whatever it was,” Len says in what Lisa long ago dubbed his “parenting voice”, he just wants to stop this pointless argument before it starts. “The cops will be everywhere, for days. We don’t want to be around for that.”

Mick grumbles something else, but otherwise it’s the end of the discussion. They keep their eyes on the news for the next few months, and in all honestly Leonard is half convinced that all the reports of people developing superpowers in the aftermath of the explosion are nothing but a hoax. He’s sure it’s all just some joke one punk started and everybody else jumped on the bandwagon.

That is, until he goes back for a job and ends up stopped by The Flash.

It doesn’t take him long to learn the hero’s identity, in fact he’s almost proud of how quickly he manages it. Barry tells him that there’s good in him, and he laughs in the kid’s face, yet as he lays awake in his cell that night the words stir up memories of a sopping wet blonde looking at him as though he is her only hope in the world. She saw good in him, he knows. During her early days on The Amazo she trailed after him like a shadow, taking in every word he would say to her, because he was supposed to keep her alive.

Barry thinks he could be a hero if he wanted, but he’s wrong. He could never be a hero. Maybe he had a chance at that once, when he was stranded in hell and given one person to save. But he failed.

He deals with Barry on and off for about a year, and he has to admit the speedster makes him think. Of course he isn’t about to act on any of those thoughts, he is far too damaged for something like that. But, maybe, in another life, it’s a halfway decent thought.

Of course, it’s the furthest thing from his mind when he and Mick are in the middle of knocking over a warehouse.

“A minivan?” Mick criticizes his choice of getaway vehicle even as he climbs into the drivers seat. “Really Snart?”

He can’t help but smirk; personally he thinks it’s a pretty ingenious disguise.

“The cops will never hassle a dad buying diapers in the middle of the night.” He brags, proudly holding up the box he’d stashed in his seat before they left.

He tosses it into the backseat as Mick takes off, speeding down the empty street just fast enough to get away but not so fast as to attract any attention of the cops.

Well, that doesn’t last long.

Still, if there is one thing Mick is good at, it’s getaway driving. So he isn’t worried, at least, not until he sees the man standing in the middle of the road.

“Watch it!” He snaps as his partner slams on the breaks, and everything goes black.

 

* * *

 

When Leonard wakes up he is aware of two things; one is that his head hurts, and two is that he’s no longer in the passenger seat of a mini van. There’s a dark night sky above him, the sound of people moaning all around him, so he figures that he isn’t alone in a hospital.

He looks to his right, where Mick is starting to sit up and complain about a headache. Then to his left, where of all people is one of Barry Allen’s supposedly genius friends.

“Stein?” He questions, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m as ignorant as you, for once.” The older man responds, egotistical as ever. If he were still listening Leonard might actually throw some type of quip back in his face, but he is far too busy sitting himself up and looking around.

He only gets as far as the Iron Man knock off on the other side of Mick.

“Where are we?”

His blood freezes in his veins at the new voice. It’s impossible, he thinks to himself. He’s mistaken; he has to be. The voice has come from the other side of Stein, and so he turns his head, the air catching in his throat.

It’s her.

Sitting just one very confused person over from him is Sara Lance, looking as shocked to see him as he is to see her. She looks different, older mostly. But her eyes are still the same crystal blue orbs that he remembers. There is so much that he wants to say to her, but not here. Not among all these strangers, not when they have no idea where they are, how they got here, or even why they were brought here. Now is probably the least opportune time for a reunion, and yet…

“The name’s Rip Hunter.” A shouting voice with a British accent cuts through Leonard’s haze, and he glances around again, but thankfully it doesn’t look like anyone noticed him and Sara sitting there staring at each other, not even the Professor sitting between them. “I’m from east London. Oh, and the future.”

Just when Leonard thought his life couldn’t get any weirder.

This Rip Hunter, who by the way Leonard doesn’t trust for a second, gives them a spiel about the future and the world being conquered by some guy named Vandal Savage. Sara makes a comment about reincarnation, as in she’s experienced it, and Len can’t help but raise an eyebrow. On one hand he could assume she’s referring to The Amazo, and what she became there. On the other hand… it doesn’t exactly sound like she means the words as a metaphor.

He really has no interest in any of this, in playing hero, but he’s watching Sara carefully throughout the whole pitch. If she goes… well he lost her once, he’ll be damned if he’s about to let her slip away again so easily.

Rip ends his whole thing by showing them a projection of the future, the city burning all around them. Len has to admit to himself at least that, while he may spend more time than most living on the wrong side of morals, not even he wants to see the world burn to the ground.

“If your answer is yes, meet me at this address in thirty-six hours.” Rip concludes, handing a notecard to Stein before leaving the rooftop.

Some people gather around the old man to look at the address, but not Sara. She turns away from the group, looking over the skyline as though she’s trying to confirm that the buildings beyond them are still in tact. The look he catches glimmering in her eyes before she’s faced completely away from him tells him that this skyline is more than just that for her, and suddenly he realizes that he’s been brought to Star City, her home.

“We going, Boss?” Mick questions, gruff voice jarring Leonard from his thoughts. His friend looks confused, he knows something’s up but he isn’t sure what.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Len replies, “Go on, I’ll meet you in the alley.”

Mick looks like he wants to ask, but he follows the instructions and heads for the same door Rip left out of. The two people in the weird brown uniforms fly off at this time as well, yes, literally sprout wings and fly off. These types of things really shouldn’t surprise Len anymore, not after he has spent the last year antagonizing a baby-faced CSI who can run faster than the speed of sound. Looking around the roof he can see that the other three recruits are actually leaving right behind Mick, perfect.

He walks up behind Sara, unsure of what to say to her. He’s sure she knows he’s right there, but she doesn’t turn around. She’s giving him time, or maybe she’s giving herself time, he isn’t sure which but he’s grateful for it either way.

“It’s been awhile,” he finally decides on, figuring it’s the easiest way to break the ice.

“It has,” she agrees, and then she finally steps back so that she can face him.

She looks troubled, her bright eyes more hollow than he remembers, long golden hair more washed and yet somehow just as matted. She’s wearing real clothes, not some worn out garments that were pulled off a dead body, but warm clothes that actually fit her. He can see that she’s been through a lot since the sub just by the way she’s standing. The Sara that he knew always had an impulsive streak to her. Sure, she was always careful and willing to listen, but in the rare instances that they were totally alone under the night sky, up on the roof of The Amazo, it wouldn’t be long before she’d be laughing, telling stories, and asking questions about his past. She had trusted him enough to confide in him about Oliver when Ivo found him. She had kissed him when Slade locked them up, and again before she left the sub, uncaring of the potential audience of other prisoners or Anatoly. From the very beginning, as soon as she realized he had no intentions of hurting her, she was always open to him. But this Sara, the one standing in front of him with her arms locked protectively across her chest and her eyes avoiding contact with his, despite it being only them, makes his gut twist. Whatever it is she’s been through these past six years it’s changed her, hardened her, and he wasn’t there to stop it.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to walk after the gangrene.” She comments and he almost laughs, but bends enough to pull the fabric of his jeans just enough to show her his “ankle”.

“Me either,” he admits, “But Anatoly said he owed me one.” He catches her eyes go wide for only a fraction of a second, but they’re back to normal before he even lets the fabric fall back into place. “Are you going?”

She takes a few seconds before answering, eyes fixated on the surface of the roof.

“I don’t know,” she finally says, then she gives him a look that he would actually describe as sorry, and it breaks his heart. “A lot has happened to me in the past few years. I… I don’t know if I’m cut out for something like this.”

He nods, he can understand that much.

But “that much” isn’t enough for him.

“Well, I’m not exactly the hero type either, but...” He tilts his head a little, hoping she’ll look at him, and a little hurt when she doesn’t. “I’m game if you are.”

It’s a beat before she answers, maybe even two, but when she does finally look up at him there is just the faintest hint of a smile on her face. It isn’t the bright one she used to wear after gaining the upper hand in their sparring sessions, not by a long shot, but it’s something.

“I’ll think about it,” she promises, and he nods to that.

It’s all he’s asking for.

* * *

 

Convincing Mick to decide to go is easier than expected, in one way at least. His partner practically jumps him with an interrogation the second they meet up, demanding to know why he was so interested in “Blondie” up there. He considers lying, or at the very least saying that he wasn’t interested in her, but he knows Mick will find out sooner or later, especially if they all show up at the address. So he confesses, tells Mick that “Blondie” is Sara, and after that Mick is practically the one dragging _him_ to the rendezvous point.

After six years believing her dead, thirty-six hours without a word from Sara but with knowledge that she is alive and safe should be easy to endure, but instead it wracks Leonard’s nerves and makes sleeping near impossible. When it’s finally time to show up Len’s heart is practically hammering in his chest, and it only increases when he sees her.

Everyone from the roof has come, all of them arriving within minutes of each other, and she smiles at him from where she’s standing as they all head onto the vacant lot together. There isn’t time to talk to her right now, not yet. But he knows he’s going to get the chance, so with that knowledge in mind he finally lets himself take in the group he has found himself in.

First there’s the guy who was wearing the robot suit last night, and considering Sara has just had to explain to him that no one says “punk’d”, well he should be fun. Then there’s Stein, who has just all but admitted that he drugged his partner. It surprises Len a little, he knew the old man was pretentious but damn, he didn’t think he’d be one to do something like that. He turns to see Mick’s reaction, but instead his eyes fall on the last two recruits. One is a guy wearing sunglasses that just scream “moron”, and the other is a woman with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes looking almost sympathetically at the unconscious kid who was drugged.

“You don’t too look happy to be here,” he notes, eyeing the moron with the sunglasses for just a second. He must be her boyfriend, or something of the sort, and Len makes a mental note to keep an eye on him.

“Perceptive,” the woman confirms dryly, so Len turns his attention back to the nothingness in front of him, where Rip has suddenly appeared.

He welcomes them, reveals his ship, and once again Leonard finds himself inexplicably surprised. He doesn’t know why, really, he didn’t think the guy was lying about the mission and he’s watched enough sci-fi that he was expecting that with eight of them, plus Rip, this would involve some sort of large time machine. A thing like that would need to be cloaked when parked, so he’s expecting it when Rip pulls out the remote to disable that cloak. But when the massive ship is actually visible in front of him, when it’s all real and tangible, it still sends a shock through his system.

When they board Mick hangs back at Stein’s request, giving him a hand with the kid. With others all thoroughly distracted by the sci-fi dream around them Len notices Sara walking alone, and decides now is the perfect time to approach her.

“I know we’ve both seen a lot in our lifetimes, but this is a lot to take in.” He observes, sidling up next to her as they enter the ship some distance behind the others but still far enough ahead of Stein, Mick, and the kid.

He doesn’t know what kind of response he is actually expecting from her, but he’ll take the little smirk of amusement, even if a crinkle of annoyance in her eyes accompanies it.

“Been awhile Leonard,” she says, echoing is words from last night. “You don’t know what I’ve seen.”

“Why don’t you catch me up then?” He asks, raising an eyebrow when she looks at him skeptically. “I have spent the past six years thinking you were dead.”

To that she smirks again, “For some of that, I was.”

That’s all she says before marching on ahead of him, putting a little extra sway in her hips in a way that she never would have six years ago. A part of him almost gets angry at it; he knows he taught her better than to do that. But then, he remembers, they aren’t on The Amazo anymore. She is safe to do something like that here, and the fact that she knows it so quickly shows just how much she has changed.

Something that he intends to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be starting on a sequel soon, following what happens on the Waverider with Sara and Len's history! Thank you all so much for reading and for the comments that never cease to brighten my days!


End file.
